China's Alibaba is in talks with one of its investors, Japan's Softbank, to form a tie-up to help merchants from their online marketplaces sell into each others' markets, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Samsung Electronics, Asia's biggest maker of chips, flat screens and mobile phones, has said it aims to post higher operating profit this year than in 2009.

"Asia is a very strategic region for Spansion in the fast growing embedded electronics markets," said John Kispert, president and CEO of Spansion. "With the addition of SL Chan, we have strengthened our team with a veteran sales and marketing executive who will be a key asset for the company's new business strategy..."

Popular social-networking site Facebook will open an office in India, joining a long list of international firms that have looked to tap a skilled workforce that provides support services at relatively cheap wages.

BYD, a Chinese car and battery maker backed by US billionaire Warren Buffett, said on Sunday its fourth-quarter net profit rose 500% thanks to robust car sales primed by tax incentives from Beijing.

The arrival of the highly-anticipated Plastic Logic Que proReader models have been delayed until the summer. Pre-orders of the thin US$649-799 business-focused readers are already sold out; they had been expected to turn up in mid-April. Instead notifications were sent to customers Thursday informing them of the delay.

The total number of employees in India is projected to rise to 10,000 from about 6,000 currently, Cisco CEO John Chambers said at a conference in New Delhi today, without specifying a timeframe for the expansion.

Canon expects China's camera market to become the world's largest as early as 2015, overtaking the US, its head of the business said. The world's biggest camera maker is doubling the number of outlets and boosting its marketing workforce in the Asian nation.