John Ribeiro

Intel Corp. announced Monday that it will invest over US$1 billion in India. The money includes $250 million it will invest in a venture capital fund, to help stimulate technological innovation in the country and drive the growth of the country's IT industry. The company is also investing $800 million over the next five years to expand its business in India, including its research and development center in Bangalore, marketing, education and community programs.

Microsoft Research Lab India Pvt. Ltd. is piloting a technology with schoolchildren in a suburb of Bangalore that lets several computer mice be used with a PC simultaneously to make up for a shortage of computers.

A consortium of investors is planning to set up a semiconductor fabrication plant in India in collaboration with the Indian government and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the participants announced.

A meeting on technology cooperation between U.S. and Indian officials and business representatives in Delhi at the end of this month is unlikely to have a significant impact on IT trade between the two countries, because of the already booming and stable two-way trade in IT between the two countries, according to Indian IT industry representatives.

Open-source groups in India are assisting the Indian government's program to distribute productivity software for free in the country, even though the software being distributed includes some proprietary software.

Cisco Systems Inc. announced Wednesday that it will invest US$1.1 billion in India over the next three years. Cisco President and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers made the announcement in Delhi on the first leg of his three-day visit to the country.

Intel Corp. will introduce a PC in India later this year that can run off a car battery in a bid to serve the needs of the country's rural and farming communities, company executives said Thursday. The Community PC, as it is called, has been designed to provide Internet access to communities and villages in rural India, Amar Babu, Intel's director for sales and marketing in South Asia, told reporters Thursday at a press briefing at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Bangalore.

Bangalore's IT industry announced Thursday that it has withdrawn its boycott of Bangalore IT.in, an annual conference and exhibition to be hosted by the local state government in October. The decision comes after assurances from the Karnataka state government that it would work toward the development and maintenance of the city's infrastructure, according to a statement Thursday by the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC), an industry association that had called for the boycott.