Bell Mobility is calling on all cell phone users to donate their old or unused phones. Last month the wireless provider launched its Recycle, Reuse and Redial program, whereby any phone, regardless of brand, make or carrier, can be dropped off by any citizen or business to all Bell World or Escape Bell stores. The program is already in full swing in Ontario and Quebec and is expanding into British Columbia and Alberta. All the proceeds garnered by the program will be donated to charity and put back in to support the endeavour, the company said. “The main reason [for the program] was to provide Canadian wireless users with a disposal method for unwanted wireless phones (and) we’re working with a number of Canadian charitable organizations as well,” a Bell spokesperson said.
Approximately 60 per cent of the unwanted phones will be recycled and the remaining 40 per cent will be donated and reused. Environment Canada has projected that by 2005, mobile phones will represent approximately 0.3 per cent of disposed IT and telecom equipment. The program is set to run indefinitely.
Dell and HP slug it out on the desktop
Dell Computer Corp. capitalized on a shift in buying from consumers to commercial customers in the first quarter, retaking the lead in worldwide PC shipments from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), according to research released last month by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. Dell shipped about 6 million units in the first quarter of 2003, up 24.7 per cent from 4.8 million units in the first quarter of last year. HP shipped 5.5 million units, down 5.7 per cent from the combined 5.8 million units shipped by HP and the former Compaq Computer Corp. in the first quarter last year.
Overall, worldwide shipments increased 2.1 per cent from last year’s first quarter to 34.6 million units, the third straight quarter of growth, said Roger Kay, director of client computing with IDC, based in Framingham, Massachusetts. “That’s a bit encouraging, but it’s still sluggish growth,” he said. Strong sales of notebook PCs lifted Toshiba Corp. into the top five vendors worldwide this quarter with 3.7 percent market share, a sign that notebooks are continuing to grow in popularity, Kay said. Toshiba sells only notebooks in the U.S., and of their 1.3 million units shipped worldwide, only about 10,000 or so are desktops, he said. IBM Corp. was third worldwide with 1.9 million units shipped in the third quarter, representing a 5.4 per cent market share.
