Martyn Williams

Taking a path already traveled by several other Japanese companies, Toshiba Corp. announced corporate-wide restructuring plans Monday that will see it focus on strong business sectors at the expense of unprofitable divisions and thousands of jobs.

Fujitsu Ltd. will announce Monday restructuring plans that include the laying off of around 15,000 workers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Sunday morning edition.

NEC Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Matsushita Communication Industrial Co. Ltd. are in the final stages of talks regarding an alliance on cellular handsets for third-generation (3G) mobile services.

Fujitsu Ltd. will announce later today its plans for a wide restructuring of its business after it previously said expects to a report group net loss of 220 billion yen (US$1.8 billion) for the current financial year.

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Coca-Cola (Japan) Co. Ltd. and Itochu Corp. plan to launch a trial on Sept. 3 of a service that lets users of the I-mode wireless Internet service buy soft drinks and other services from vending machines using their cellular handsets.

A new and potentially more serious version of the Code Red computer worm began circulating over the weekend, according to several computer security-related companies and services.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has developed and is about to begin mass production of a new memory chip for mobile telephones that is about 30 per cent smaller in physical size than existing chips.

Global trade exceeded US$6 trillion in 2000, the first time it has ever passed that mark, thanks in part to the boom in information technology investment in the United States, according to the Japanese government-affiliated Japan External Trade Organization's (JETRO) annual white paper on international trade, which was released Thursday.