News Wrap: Motorola, Sony Ericsson, 3G delay, Wind-up phones, Garden gnomes

Motorola is expected later today to tell 3000 workers at its Bathgate factory in Scotland that they will be made redundant.

Union officials said they feared the worst after the company scheduled two meetings with staff representatives for today [Tuesday]. It is expected the representatives will be given details of the company's restructuring plan at the meetings.

In all, Motorola plans to cut 22,000 jobs worldwide.

Sony agrees joint venture with Ericsson

Ericsson has confirmed it has agreed a deal with Sony to jointly produce mobile handsets, which the two will publicly announce later today.

The joint venture is expected to be called Sony Ericsson and be led by Ericsson chief executive Kurt Hellstrom as chairman. Jan Wareby, head of Ericsson's mobile phone division, is expected to be chief executive.

Analysts said the deal gives Ericsson a badly needed partner to revive its loss-making mobile phone division and give it a foothold in the attractive Japanese market. Sony, in turn, gets a boost to its weak presence in Europe and the US, wireless expertise and a distribution network.

World's first 3G network delayed by three months

Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo said today [Tuesday] that it needed to carry our further testing of its 3G network, which will be the first to launch.

The telco has put back the launch by four months and will now begin its fully-fledged service on 1 October rather than 30 May.

European telecoms companies, which have invested billions of dollars in 3G, had been looking to DoCoMo to prove that the new networks could be a hit with consumers. Analysts said the delay could push back 3G launches globally.

World's first wind-up mobile phone to go on sale soon

The world's first wind-up mobile phone is expected to go on sale within months, according to reports in the Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper reports that designer Freeplay Energy Europe is about to sign a contract for the design with a major manufacturer. Based on the same principle as the clockwork radio, it is said to run for six minutes each time the handle is cranked.

PCs and phones to help gnomes overtake snails and tortoises

Manufactures of garden gnomes are to ditch their companion fishing rods for mobile phones and laptops, after Tesco reported that sales of the decorative figures had dropped off alarmingly.

Tesco said stone snails and tortoises had overtaken the gnome as the nation's favourite garden ornaments. A spokesman said: "Coming home after a hard day's work to find your garden gnome still in exactly the same spot, contentedly fishing, doesn't fit in easily with today's active lifestyle. Society now expects more of us, and therefore we have all come to expect more from our garden gnomes."