Pilkington to make India a base
New Delhi: British sunglasses and prescription glasses company Pilkington Special Glass is making India an export base. The company will launch its designer sunglasses in the country in December 1999.

India has been selected as a launch pad as the company feels Indians prefer glass lenses to plastic lenses, says the company's businessline manager, worldwide, Brian J. McDermott.

The Pilkington sunglasses will cost about the same as Ray Ban glasses. The $3 billion company plans to target a market segment with large disposable incomes in India.
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Samsonite to up output
Bangalore: Samsonite India, the luggage and accessories maker, is increasing its output 30 per cent from the present level of half a million units. The company intends to introdude more products, Ramesh Tainwala, managing director, said.

Mr Taiwala said Samsonite is confident of getting a market share of 12 per cent in 1999. In the Rs 1,500-plus market, the company has a share of over 65 per cent, he said.
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Sony files contempt case against Zee
Mumbai: Sony Entertainment Television has filed a contempt petition against Zee Telefilms and Asia Today for telecasting a Hindi film, Lawaris on 3 October. Sony contends that the Bombay High Court had passed an order restraining Zee from airing the film.

Sony has a contract with film producer Prakash Mehra for purchasing the telecast rights of 11 of his films for five years, including Lawaris. Zee had a similar right to Mr Mehra's films, and the contract is said to have ended in August 1999.

Zee claims that it did not receive the court's order in time and that its contract with Mr Mehra had not, in fact, expired.
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MRTPC absolves Jyothy Labs
Mumbai: The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission has absolved Jyothy Laboratories, maker of Ujala Supreme, of charges of unfair trade practices.

Reckitt & Colman had filed a case against Jyothy Laboratories. The chairman of MRTPC, A.N. Divecha, and member M. Mahajan said the formulation used by Jyothy Laboratories is claimed to be its invention of the formulation and not of the ingredient, and upheld the claim that Ujala Supreme was a whitening agent invented by the company. The commission said claiming credit for a formulation did not amount to misrepresentation of facts.

The commission also wondered why the director general of investigation and registration was speaking for Reckitt & Colman by saying that Ujala Supreme was designed to disparage Robin Blue.
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Microsoft foresees more use of smart cards
Washington: Microsoft foresees widespread use of smart cards based on the newest and smallest version of the company's Windows operating system. The company intends to release its Windows Smart Cards Toolkit in November, company officials said. The toolkit will allow developers to begin shipping Windows-based applications embedded on credit card-sized devices.

Smart Cards, which include a thumbnail-sized computer chip that can be encoded with anything from personal photos to bank account information, are popular in Europe but have failed to catch on in the US.

American Express has released a new smart credit card and this, Microsfot expects, will encourage Americans to take to the card.
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IBM plans online product sale
New York: IBM said it is folding its consumer-oriented personal computer business into a broader personal computer operation. In the process, it will cut 500 to 1,000 jobs.

The restructuring and the proposal to sell more products online instead of through stores are part of IBM's effort to restore profits for its personal systems group.
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DaimlerChrysler claims leadership
Frankfurt: DaimlerChrysler is expecting to extend its lead in the global commercial vehicles market and said it will maintain its lead in spite of the proposed deal between Sweden's Volvo-Scania and Japan's Mitsubishi Motor.

A DaimlerChrysler spokesman said the group, which considers itself to be ahead of the Volvo-Scania-Mitsubishi, expects the number of independent truck companies to be reduced in the near future to 10 worldwide. He said DaimlerChrysler plans to build its market share this year.

The company claimed that it is leader in the 6-tonne-plus and 16-tonne-plus segments, producing 250,700 units in these categories, compared to 181,200 of the Volvo-Scania-Mitsubishi combine.
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Nippon Mitsubishi, Cosmo in talks
Tokyo: Nippon Mitsubishi Oil Corporation, the largest oil refiner and distributor in Japan, says it is in talks with Cosmo Oil Company, the third largest in the country, on a tie-up, covering refining.

A Nippon Mitsubishi spokesman said the talks are on and no final accord has been reached. Any understanding will force other major players such as Japan Energy, Royal Dutch/Shell's affiliate Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, and Idemitsu Kosan to come up with schemes in response.
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