13
June
2005
|
01:02 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Monday's News (aka the Asia Report)


Broadband wireless provider SOMA Networks has landed $35m in venture funding. The round was led by Singapore-based Temasek and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, with participation from NeoCarta Ventures and Endeavour Investments. This follows $15m in funding secured late last year.


Lots of other Asia connections today ... Intel celebrated its 20th anniversary of doing business in China by launching the $200m Intel Capital China Technology Fund. It will focus on "cellular communications, broadband applications for consumers, and semiconductor design," according to the Intel press release. Intel also announced earnings this quarter of $9.1 - $9.3 billion, a big jump over last quarter's numbers. ...


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According to the FT, Microsoft is censoring key words like "democracy" and "freedom" from its Chinese MSN site in an effort to avoid pissing off the Chinese. (Via Silicon.com). This at the same time US trade representatives are trying to get the Chinese to crack down on piracy...

In other MS Asia news, the government of Indonesia claims MS will offer a $1 a seat amnesty program to get the Indonesians in compliance. Micrsoft denies (WebProNews) ...


Nokia and Intel are joining forces to promote mobile WiMax, according to PCMag. In other Nokia news, the cellphone maker is moving forward with a web browser based on the open source Konqueror browser, according to Macworld ...


And in digital music news, MS is rumored to be readying a subscription-based music service. A product manager threw this up the flagpole: "We are actively investigating the subscription model, but we don't have anything to share today. Once we are ready to talk more, we'll let you know." (via WebProNews ... And David Utter of WebPro notes that a new Nokia phone supports Apple's AAC format, which suggest support for the iTunes store.