Monday, June 25, 2001		Newsscape

Destination India

Microsoft is getting aggressive about sourcing talent from India, The Economic Times report says. The company is eyeing India as the country with the second largest number of software developers and its three-pronged approach begins with what is being touted as its most ambitious university relationship programme outside US. After this, the company plans to set up labs, beginning with IIT Kharagpur. The company’s university summit will feature Indian professors from IITs and RECs exchanging ideas with Microsoft’s research team, the report adds.

IT parks

A real estate Singapore-based company, Ascendas Land International, is scouting for partners to develop infrastructure for IT parks in Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi, says Hindustan Times. Talks are in the final stages with an Indian company to build IT parks and built-to-suit facilities in India by 2002. The US slowdown has prompted many companies to look towards a country like India where the cost production is low.

Cab mail

Surfing the Internet, checking e-mail and online stock trading from the comfort of a CityCab taxi's back seat. That is what Singapore's number two taxi company hopes to offer its passengers soon, The Straits Times says. The company is pumping $15 million into start trials, including easy ways to book cabs and pay for fares. The result could be hi-tech taxis sporting the hottest wireless technologies. They will have features from high-speed Internet access for passengers, using next-generation mobile-phone technology called GPRS, to voice-activated controls for drivers. CityCab will also try out location-based services that can track a mobile-phone user's position. A commuter only needs to dial a certain number — and the company's computers will automatically be able to tell where his call is coming from and despatch a cab there.

Mitsubishi phones

Operating through an Israeli company, Mitsubishi is cranking up its largely non-existent distributor network in India to take on Nokia and Motorola in the field of cellular phones. To achieve its aim, the company has already set up a liaison office in Delhi, The Hindu reports. Although most of the Mitsubishi phones being used by Indian subscribers seems to be at the lower end, the company’s business strategy would be to target the upper end of the mobile market, estimated to be six lakhs annually, the daily quoted a company spokesperson as saying. These days the ‘cheap’ Mitsubishi phones generally seen in India are mostly smuggled, outdated and low on quality.

What’s WWW?

An AFP report asserts that only about 6 per cent of the world’s population uses the Internet, with most of the rest unawares or uninterested in the World Wide Web, according to a survey released by a research firm, Ipsos-Reid. The firm surveyed persons in 30 countries and found that even in developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands about one-third of persons who could use the Internet chose not to, the report says. Among developing countries, Internet penetration is much lower; 21 per cent in urban China, 22 per cent in urban Brazil and 9 per cent in urban India. The report found only seven countries where Internet usage topped 50 per cent of the population.