India&rsquo;s third largest network service provider, Reliance Communications (RCom), is close to signing an agreement with US-based GetJar to launch its own application store (app store, software modules to run specific tasks on own mobiles), sources said.

RCom to tie up with US giant for application store

Business Standard

Fourth quarter results of the top four IT firms signal business recovery, though pressure on margins expected.

Wipro posts 22% jump in net profit

The IT arm of Wipro witnessed sound growth both in the domestic and international markets during the quarter ended March 31. The Joint CEOs of Wipro Technologies, Suresh Vaswani &amp; Girish S Paranjpe, spoke to Archana M Prasanna and Debasis Mohapatra on growth plans and the impact of the overall business environment.

'Business is better now'

Bangalore-based information technology (IT) services provider MindTree is understood to have emerged as the winner for the application development services (ADM) segment of the Nandan Nilekani-headed Unique Identification (UID) project. This is the first of the many IT projects that have come up for bidding till date.

MindTree may bag first UID IT project

The disruption in the SEA-ME-WE 4 undersea submarine cable system, which links South East Asia and Europe, is likely to affect the high-speed Internet services in the country.

Undersea cable system repair may hit Internet service in India

Press Trust of India

IT giants Infosys, TCS and Wipro hired over 20,000 employees in the January-March quarter, with improving business conditions propelling their recruitment plans.

3 Indian IT giants hire 20,000 employees in Q4

Virtual reality sites catch on with users in India.

Get a life, virtually!

Motorola is lining up products this year to liven up two of its businesses &mdash; handsets and network solutions. In the handset business, it has fallen way behind aggressive competitors such as Nokia, Samsung and LG. In network solutions and managed services, analysts reckon it lags behind players such as Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Lucent.

Motorola: Trying to catch up

Ready or not, 3D television is here. The first sets, from Samsung and Panasonic, are showing up in US stores, and the trickle is about to turn into a flood as Sony, LG, Vizio and others join the fray in coming months.

Say no to 3D, and how to do it anyway

Infosys, India&rsquo;s second-largest information technology services provider, believes winning two to five &lsquo;transformational&rsquo; deals in the range of $30-80 million for the company every quarter could become a norm.

Infy eyeing at least two  deals every quarter

The 3G services being offered by state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) in 23 towns and cities of Punjab and Chandigarh have found many takers. Thirteen months after its commercial launch in February last year, BSNL has been able to get 190,000 subscribers (up to March 31, 2010) for 3G services in Punjab and Chandigarh. In order to strengthen its network, it is planning to add 400 new sites for 3G services across the state.

Many takers for BSNL 3G services in Punjab, Chd

The government could end up with Rs 45,000-50,000 crore as revenue from the 3G/BWA (third generation/broadband wireless access) auctions for spectrum; this compares with the Budget estimate of Rs 35,000 crore. Day 14 of the auction for 3G spectrum saw bids reach Rs 33,500 crore, while the BWA auction is scheduled to start two days after the 3G bidding is over.

Winner's curse

India&rsquo;s export-oriented software industry has put behind it the toughest year in its history, with its business model intact. The recovery now under way is likely to be broad-based, stretching across geographies, businesses and verticals, according to Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, who is the industry doyen. This is why the stock market&rsquo;s response to the fourth quarter results has been guided more by the forecasts issued, as in the case of Infosys, than by the performance in the last quarter. The expected recovery is likely to walk on two legs. One is the recovery of the global financial majors who are critical to Indian software for being among its largest customers. The other is the incipient overall recovery in the mature economies which is expected to enable firms to again start spending for greater efficiencies. The anticipation of good times ahead is indicated by projections of higher hiring and announcement of pay hikes.

On recovery road

Also signs a five-year Rs 1,110-crore agreement.

Patni acquires Universal American subsidiary

An effective whistleblower policy and an ombudsman mechanism on employee complaints are among the measures recommended by a panel chaired by Infosys&rsquo; chairman, N R Narayana Murthy, for bettering the way companies are managed.

Murthy-chaired panel demands effective whistleblower policy

With business showing signs of normalcy returning and projects increasingly getting the green signal from clients, the information technology/business process outsourcing (IT/BPO) sector has started increasing its hiring after a lull of almost two years.

IT/BPO firms increase hiring but exercise caution

Around four years back, at a time when the term &lsquo;mobile applications&rsquo; (or mobile apps as they are better known) was not even bandied around as tech jargon in the country, software veteran Amit Goenka set up a company in Noida called Ariose Software. He wanted to provide software consultancy in the field of telecom and mobile technologies. His move made sense. The telecom space was hotting up, with around 8-10 million mobile subscribers being added each month. Moreover, the value-added services (VAS) market was growing at a rapid pace. And the mobile app space, a VAS offering, tasted first blood.

Ringing in the good times for mobile app developers

Stepping up its expansion plans, telecom products manufacturer Kavveri Telecom Products has been evaluating acquisition targets in North America and central and Latin American countries, according to informed sources.

Kavveri eyeing acquisition in radio frequency space

Falling call rates due to rising competition pulled Bharti Airtel&rsquo;s net profit down eight per cent for the fourth quarter ended March 31. The fall, the first in three years, comes at a time when the country&rsquo;s top mobile service provider is looking to quickly integrate its $9 billion purchase of Zain Telecom&rsquo;s African assets &mdash; as early as mid-May.

Bharti Q4 profit falls 8%

US-based telecom services provider AT&amp;T has sold a 6.02 per cent stake in Pune-headquartered Tech Mahindra (TM) to India&rsquo;s largest life insurance firm, government-owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), for an estimated Rs 560 crore.

LIC buys 6% AT&T stake in TechM

If everything goes well as planned, India will be ready to have internationalised domain names (IDN) on the internet in seven Indian languages &mdash; Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati &mdash; by next year. The department of information technology (DIT), Government of India will submit its proposal by next month to The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names &amp; Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organisation responsible for managing the internet's domain name system, including IP address space assignments based in California, USA.

Net domain names in Indian languages

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