Siemens Lowers Q4 Target on Mobile Defect

German electronics giant Siemens said Friday that financial burdens connected with a technical fault in its new mobile phone handsets were likely to reduce earnings in the final quarter of its business year ending in September. This week, Siemens revealed that its 65-series mobile phones had a software defect that could lead to audio transmission failures in rare cases. And if a phone call were cut off because the handset's battery had run out, the disconnection melody could begin to play at a very high volume, possibly leading to hearing damage, Siemens warned. As a result, mobile phone service providers including Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, Vodafone, mmO2 and E-Plus had stopped offering the phones to customers. "That this will have an impact on the fourth-quarter result is absolutely clear," a company spokesman said, but refused to estimate how much the problem might cost Siemens. (AFP)