New multiyear deals expand IBM’s involvement in large-scale business IT projects to India’s Idea Cellular, Sweden’s Sony Ericsson and Spain’s Endesa. The agreements re-emphasize the role of IBM’s Global Services in bolstering the company’s bottom line even in the midst of an international downturn.

Indian IT services provider Infosys Technologies on Tuesday reported a more than 6% increase in fiscal third-quarter profit and said it is seeing no fallout from the Satyam debacle, but warned that the pricing environment is challenging and trimmed its outlook for the full year.

Wipro, India's third-largest software exporter, and Megasoft Consultants, are barred from working for the World Bank, the institution said, less than three weeks after it disclosed Satyam Computer Services was banned.

India is hopeful an auction for third-generation (3G) radio waves next month will draw in bids at a "few times" the reserve price of 20.20 billion rupees ($415 million), a senior government official said on Tuesday.

"My ministry will provide financial assistance amounting to 12 rupees (30 cents) per kilowatt hour in case of solar photovoltaic and 10 rupees per kilowatt hour in case of solar thermal power fed to the electricity grid," Vilas Muttemwar said in a press conference.

Hyderabad's plan to become the semiconductor manufacturing capital of India has run into trouble and this could impact Andhra Pradesh's image as a vibrant investment destination. SemIndia, an integrated semiconductor company, has decided to put its plan to set up a US$3-billion chip manufacturing facility (fab) on the backburner. But the company's proposed plant on assembly, testing, marking and packing (ATMP) in the city will start production in the second quarter of next year.

The deadly attacks Wednesday in Mumbai, in addition to the human toll, have damaged for now the city's lofty ambitions of becoming an international finance capital rivaling Hong Kong and Singapore.

.."We are doubling the number of our R&D engineering staff from the existing figure of 2,000 to 4,000 within the next two years for our Noida facility," Zutshi said. The company is planning to put special emphasis on the LCD TV and Flat CRT TV segments as part of its growth strategy..

...India, with nearly 300 million mobile users, is the second-largest wireless market in the world after China, and has the potential for further huge growth as just over a quarter of its population have cellphones now. Operators are signing up 8-9 million users every month, and Gartner, a consultancy, expects 737 million connections by 2012.

Moser Baer's solar photovoltaic subsidiary has raised approximately US$93 million from an international group of investment houses in its bid to expand production of both crystalline solar wafer and thin film operations. Moser Baer is currently establishing a thin film PV plant near Chennai with a proposed 500MW annualized capacity, using Applied Materials ‘SunFab’ turnkey amorphous silicon production technology.

...Even India's government ministries responsible for facilitating the belated start of semiconductor manufacturing in India seem to have focused solely on the financial aspects (e.g., subsidies), and at the same time, underestimated the overwhelming importance of securing scarce technical knowhow that still dominates the viability of this most high tech of industries. The fact that nanoscale devices are already in production at the latest wafer fabs seems to have escaped them as well...

With India planning to invest US$5 billion in building the world`s largest solar power generation system, which needs for 5,000 megawatt of solar cells, the big order would accelerate Motech`s plan to tap the Indian market to seize the huge business opportunity in the future.

"Intel believes a Wimax-ready laptop could be available in the Indian market at around US$300-400 dollars in a few months," Intel India's newly appointed Managing Director for Wimax division C S Rao told PTI.

India's Tata Communications, formerly known as VSNL is planning to expand its WiMAX coverage from the current 60 towns to 115 during this financial year and is considering taking its broadband WiMAX services to four or five cities. "The government has announced that it will auction spectrum. Once the spectrum is allotted, we plan to take the broadband-WiMAX services to four-five cities," Tata Communications CEO, N Srinath said over the weekend.

Trai has also accused the Department of Telecom (DoT) of keeping it in the dark, both on the availability of WiMAX spectrum as well as on the government’s efforts to get other users such as the department of space to vacate these radio frequencies.The regulator has also demanded that the government put in place a transparent and efficient spectrum management regime.

...Sources say that the DoT wants the WiMax launch be initially restricted to only three players who will operate this service in the 2.5 GHz frequency band where one of the slots is reserved for state-owned BSNL/MTNL. This contradicts the recommendations of telecom regulator TRAI which had suggested that wireless broadband be rolled out in 3.3-3.4 GHz and 3.4-3.6 Ghz frequencies and up to 13 players be allocated spectrum to offer WiMax services....

According to a report in The Times of India that quoted Katta Subramanya Naidu, Karnataka's minister for information technology, policy makers plan a special focus on encouraging photovoltaics and solar panel manufacturing. Bengaluru is a magnet for investments by software and hardware design companies, but other cities in Karnataka state have largely been ignored. With the capital city booming, planners want to make neighboring cities like Mysore attractive destinations for high-tech investors.