The mobile phone market is a particularly vicious one at the minute what with everyone trying to kill the iPhone. A lot are leaping into the arms of various HTC phones and Blackberry smartphones, leaving a lot of the old guard really struggling to keep up with the pace.

One such company is Nokia who are currently watching the arse fall out of their profits. The Guardian report that the handset maker’s profits have fallen 40% in the second quarter of 2010.

One of Nokia’s problems seem to be that there’s not much money in mere handsets and they keep cutting the prices of higher-end units in a bid to make them more attractive to consumers. The consumers, it seems, are just not interested.

As a result, chief executive of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is getting a lot of heat and rumours suggest that he’s going to get the chop soon with shareholders already looking for a replacement. They’ve given themselves the tall order of finding a “European Steve Jobs”.

Kallasvuo hit out against the rumours saying: “There has been a lot of speculation on my position, on myself, during the last couple of weeks and that is not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another.”

“At the same time, I’m not in a position here and now to really shed any more light on the topic so I guess this is a no comment. I really concentrate now on the task at hand.”

Nokia are now hoping that their fortunes will better with the new Nokia N8 smartphone, despite the release being put back until later in the year. While Nokia’s stock falls, Apple is reporting a best ever quarter.

Of course, it is a little early to be calling the death of a company that still makes one in every four phones sold in the world (thanks largely to cheaper handsets selling well in developing countries) but this trend is an alarming one for a company in the middle of one of the largest growing markets.

Boo! Money-budgeting website Kublax is closing down and taking all your records with it!

Hooray! Money-budgeting website Kublax isn’t closing down because an investor is willing to pump some pennies into it!

Boo! Never mind, then:

Dear Kublax users and friends,

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that we were not able to find a solution that allowed Kublax to live on. Many thanks for all your supportive messages over the past week.

Following yesterday’s news that it’s ‘sell up or die’ for Borders bookshop chain, the company have now stopped taking new orders for books, saying that they are freezing orders while “the business is in discussion with potential buyers.”

However, the move is more likely to be connected to reports that some publishers are refusing to deal with the chain, which may not last until Christmas unless they are sold. HMV are in the frame to do a deal, while WH Smith pulled out of talks last Friday.

Customers who try to order a title online are greeted with a message that reads: “Sorry, title cannot be purchased.” A bit like the company itself right now.

Blacks, that lot who specialise in outdoor stuff, look like they’re on the ropes with the company doing a ‘restructure’.  This means that they’ve had to hire someone to supervise the process which could see 89 of its stores close.

KPMG UK head of restructuring Richard Fleming said:  “The proposed CVA gives Blacks the opportunity to preserve 291 trading stores and around 4,300 jobs.  The CVA proposal is asking landlords of unoccupied stores to come to a compromise on the company’s financial liability.”

This news comes on the back of Alan Sugar’s pal, Claude Littner, jumping ship from the leisure group. The Guardian quoted him as saying that he was “banging his head against a brick wall” over the fact that the management were too soft to do the dirty business required to haul Blacks’ sorry arse away from a “perilous” outcome.

Blacks Chief Executive Neil Gillis said:”After several years of losses Blacks embarked on a turnaround plan in early 2008. That plan successfully reduced the cost base of the business, reduced our working capital requirements.

“However, the severity of the current trading environment and the drag of the loss-making Boardwear business has required a more radical set of measures to complete the turnaround of this business.”

Apparently, property sources have said they’ve been unimpressed by Blacks’ handling of the situation. It all seems a bit of a sorry state of affairs really.

[RetailWeek]

Bye bye Coffee Republic, in these troubled times you were one high street caffeine merchant too many. The administrators have been called in and loss-making outlets are expected to close, with profitable ones sold on to the highest bidder.

Starting out as a single store in London’s West End in 1995, the company grew rapidly to eventually occupy 187 sites, but has failed to match up against the might of its main rivals Starbucks and Costa.

Insert your own joke about bean counters here.

Throughout the recession, there’s been a belief that budget stores have continued to thrive as punters look to make their money go further. Indeed, this writer recently had a dream where the naked CEO of Poundland danced drunkenly on a grave that had ‘Debenhams’ etched into the headstone. But that’s another story.

That belief that budget stores are recession-proof has been exposed as a myth today with the announcement that Instore have doubled their losses to £5.8m in the year up to February 28th, more than doubling the previous year’s loss of £2.2m.

But wait a minute – maybe budget is best after all. Instore, of course, own the Poundstretcher brand, and the Instore shops were seen as an attempt to add a veneer of sophistication to a super-affordable offering. And now it seems that Instore are looking to convert many of their stores to the Poundstretcher brand, with ‘pile ‘em high and sell ’em cheap’ possibly the way forward. If it doesn’t work out, it could be curtains for both names.

Elsewhere, crap off licence chain Thresher are continuing to edge towards the retail exit door. It’s been reported that some franchisees are only receiving around 55-60 per cent of the stock they’ve ordered over the past two months.

This worrying news comes after the company’s owner, First Quench Group, issued a “going concern” warning on Companies House, outlining a “material uncertainty” casting doubt on its ability to continue trading in its current form. Between May 2007 and June 2008, the group’s pre-tax losses were £30m.

Could it be last orders for Thresher soon then? Actually, that doesn’t make any sense really, because although they sell booze, they’re not a pub. Sorry.

In days gone by, the humble camera shop represented a veritable Aladdin’s cave of curiosity and intimidation. Now, it serves only to allow online buyers to test-drive equipment before they buy it off eBay, while everybody else heads to PC World to buy something with more pixels than necessary to photograph their pissed-up mates on a hen night.

This shift in business is not lost on those behind the counter. Camera firm Jessops, which has over 200 stores across the North of England has announced the likelihood of job losses and the need for a “fundamental restructuring” of its debt, which currently adds up to £60 million. Because of their historic high level of debt, it’s thought that no value will be attributed to shareholders. Ooops.

The UK’s largest photographic retailer reported half-year losses of over £6 million for the six months to the end of March, with sales were down four per cent; that follows full-year losses of almost £50 million at the beginning of February, despite closing over 80 stores in 2007. The company has refused to comment further on any expected redundancies. We’ll let you know how the story develops.

After predicting the collapse of the High Street at Christmas time, it’s been all too quiet on the Deathwatch front recently. Not to worry because Bay Trading has started the ball rolling again, after announcing it was been placed in administration.

1,000 jobs at nearly 300 branches of the store are at risk. Parent company Alexon – who also own lesser known brands such as Ann Harvey, Dash, Estrex and Kaliko – reported a full year pre-tax loss of nearly £28 million, compared with a profit of £12 million the previous year.

The company has stated that Bay Trading had been loss-making and had relied on funding from the rest of the group to survive. Administrators Deloitte are to keep the stores running for the time being to try and secure a buyer. Good luck with that.

[BBC]

There’s fresh turmoil for thousands of holidaymakers after the collapse of Newcastle-based online travel agency Freedom Direct. It’s estimated that as many as 10,000 customers have holidays booked for later in the year with the company, which has ceased trading thanks to the effects of the economic downturn.

They traded under a variety of names, which included freedomdirect.co.uk, freedom-direct.co.uk, snowdeals.co.uk, hotsunholidays.co.uk and holidaysyoulike.co.uk. At the moment it is unclear if existing bookings will be honoured or if refunds would be available.

Customers who have booked Freedom Direct’s own package holidays should be safe under ATOL protection, but those who used the site to book holidays through another operator may lose out.

Passengers who booked package holidays and have yet to travel are advised to call the CAA on 020 7379 7311. Those who booked a flight or accommodation with another ATOL-bonded company should call 01243 621500. For those unfortunate customers who are not covered by ATOL, it is recommended that they contact their bank or credit card provider to see if they are able to get their money back.

One thing’s for certain – it’ll be a nailbiting summer for holidaymakers who have booked with smaller travel agencies as Freedom Direct probably won’t be the last to go under.

It’s all very well jetting off to Magaluf for a tenner, but Ryanair and the likes still need places to land their planes – unless they make it a requirement for passengers to provide their own runway which, giving Michael O’Leary’s recent comments, doesn’t seem too far fetched. Still, short of taking off from the M1 and establishing passport control at Little Chef, planes will need airports, and that could soon be a problem.

The Airport Operators Association has warned that passenger numbers dropped by 15% last month. Those numbers sound manageable until you look at individual sites – passenger numbers dropped by 70% at Blackpool Airport and were halved at Durham Tees Valley.

According to the BBC, this has led to tit-for-tat in-fighting between airports and budget airlines. Airports have begun introducing fees to fast-track passengers through security, while Blackpool and Norwich now charges a mandatory airport development fee per passenger. Budget airlines believe the charges are driving more passengers away and are threatening to abandon airports that charge trumped-up fees. Easyjet says it withdrew services from Warsaw after excess fees were brought in, and is threatening to do the same again in the UK.

But is a nominal fee really a deal-breaker when booking flights? Or is it the constant succession of small fees throughout the booking process (many of which are levied by the airline) that eventually turn you off flying, especially when a family trip means multiple charges? Would you be happy to pay a £20 charge to fly your family from your local airport, or would you prefer to drive to the nearest regional airport instead? Would the world really miss Blackpool or Durham Tees Valley, when the alternatives (Manchester or Newcastle) would mean more choice and lower fares? Let us know what you think.

This would be good news if consumers were shunning four-wheeled transport in favour of jet packs and teleportation. But they’re not. So it isn’t. Car sales in the UK fell by over 30 per cent in March compared with twelve months ago, which is what the business might at best refer to as “a stinker”. What’s worse is that March is usually a buoyant month for car sales because of new registrations.

Sales of new cars fell across the board, with the exception of the small kiddie-car sizes of vehicle, which actually saw an increase in sales of over 80 percent. The Fiesta was the best-selling car for the fifth month in a row, proving that cost and economy counts for more than having enough room for even amateur cat-swinging.

The slump wasn’t seen elsewhere, however. According to the BBC, new car registrations in Germany rose 40 percent in March and in France increased by almost 10 per cent. Both countries have recently adopted scrappage schemes, which sees motorists paid for their old car when buying another.

It doesn’t matter because nobody wants a car anymore, and hasn’t since the 1960s as this video proves – fuck the Fiesta, we want jet packs and we want them now:

We launched the Retail Deathwatch mini-site the other day with the intention of tracking who consumers think will be the next brands to bite the bullet this year. Some of you got it and others erupted in spasms of sanctimonious outrage. THINK OF THE CHILDREN PEOPLE!

As said we do not have the god-like ability to make merchants go broke. That would be great because we could charge a lot for it, make it through this economic shitstorm unscathed and distribute the coinage like Robin of yore. No, sadly all we can do is use the collected wisdom of all your predictions to map which retailers are thought to be under most threat in the current economic climate.

So here’s the current top ten as collected from everyone’s Deathlists (make your own):

1. Currys (52 lists)
2. PC World (48 lists)
3. Jessops (41 lists)
4. WHSmith (34 lists)
5. BHS (30 lists)
6. JJB Sports (20 lists)
7. Homebase (17 lists)
8. Dixons (15 lists)
9. Focus Do It All (13 lists)
10. HMV (11 lists)

The more lists we have of who consumers think are under threat the better picture we have of which retailers are possibly on shaky ground. If you want to contribute your predictions hit up the make a list page and send it in.

We’ve been keeping a Deathwatch here on Bitterwallet as we watch the heroes of the high street collapse in a withering pile of debt and corporate administrators.

There’s a lot of questions out there about which brands are going to come out the other side of the recession intact and we’ve all got our opinions about which merchants are going to bite it.

So we’ve gone and made Retail Deathwatch – a simple site where you can make your death list predictions. Make a list of five merchants you think are going to die off and see how well you can predict the future of the high street.

We’ll mark off the merchants as they die and rank the death lists by most accurate predictions. Let’s see who the Bitterwallet hive mind thinks is next to fall on the high street. The more lists we get the more accurate we may be…

Retail Deathwatch – Official undertaker of Recession 2.0

If you want to digg it…

Jessops probably doesn’t belong on the retail Deathwatch list, but Andy accidentally dropped the old list in the bath, so we need to fill up a brand new one. A high street specialist camera shop feels a little superfluous when there are plenty of online counterparts, so it may not be a bad shout.

The company has just reported full-year losses of almost £50 million, hot on the heels of the first stumble encountered by the digital camera market in many years. According to Which? like-for-like sales fell 6.5 per cent in the year, although price cuts helped Jessops to a 3.8 per cent rise in the past two months, although it’s thought sales would have dropped further if prices hadn’t been cut. Jessop’s market share also took a tumble, from 18.7 per cent to 15.9 per cent, a result of 81 stores closing in 2007.

How many of us use shops like Jessops to road-test the physical products and then order them online regardless? If that’s the case, will Jessops continue to have a significant presence on the high street?

[Which?]

Breaking news – the administrators have taken over at the shoe-store chains of Barratt and Priceless Shoes.

Between them, the brands have approximately 400 stores in the UK, employing 5450 staff.  The stores are continuing to trade and their parent company Stylo is not in administration at this point – trading in its shares has been suspended though.

In 2008, Stylo posted a pre-tax loss of £12.5m, following on from a loss of £7.1m the previous year. They join fellow footwear hawkers Stead & Simpson, Dolcis and Faith in the admin pen.

We’re all hardened clog men here at Bitterwallet so we’ve no real experience of any of those stores, but if you have, tell us where they all went wrong.