Martyn Williams

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. last week unveiled the latest in a line of mobile phones that incorporate additional functions. This time, the South Korean company has built a PDA (personal digital assistant) into a cellular handset.

Worldwide demand for DRAM (dynamic random access memory) will increase by 50 per cent to 370 petabits in 2001, down on the 65 per cent jump estimated for the market during 2000, according to a forecast released Monday by Japanese market research company Nikkei Market Access (NMA).

Sony Corp., NTT DoCoMo Inc. and nine other companies announced plans Monday for a full-scale launch within the year of an electronic money system. The companies intend to develop the system into a major payment system within five years, the companies said in a joint statement.

Video game manufacturers Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Sega Corp. vehemently denied a New York Times report today that the companies are in talks to merge.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Portugal's Octal Engenharia de Sistemas SA (Octal) announced Monday plans to jointly develop cable and satellite television set-top boxes based on Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft TV software platform.

A slowdown in U.S. and European economies and reduced demand for information technology goods will hit growth in the ten largest economies in East Asia, excluding Japan, in 2001, according to forecasts from the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), a unit of the Japanese government-backed Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO).

With predictions of a future shortage in bandwidth combined with the recent high-profile breakdown in a major regional undersea fibre-optic cable, Asia's telecommunications infrastructure has come under the spotlight like never before.

Following major expansions of its operations in the United States and Europe, telecommunications and broadband service provider Qwest Communications International Inc. is now making a determined push to become a force in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific market.