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Crude oil prices up in Asia
Singapore: Crude oil prices are rising in Asia, and there are fears that the recent dip in demand is over.

Light, sweet crude for November on the New York Mercantile Exchange increased by 42 cents to $63.95 a barrel as Asian electronic trading hours began, before falling to $63.66 mid morning in Singapore yesterday.

In New York, the front-month contract jumped by $1.73 to close at $63.53 after the Paris-based international energy agency said demand would fall for the rest of the year but rebound in 2006.

The IEA, the energy watchdog for industrialised countries, cautioned against a prolonged loss of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, saying output in non-OPEC supplies in 2005 and 2006 would fall by 300,000-400,000 barrels per day. The agency also said member nations may have to dip into reserves to meet demand.

IEA forecast that demand from China was also likely to pick up into the New Year. China's demand for crude would be around 6.64-million barrels a day in 2005, a 3.2-per cent rise on last year.
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Hutchison has more than 10 million global 3G users
Hong Kong: Hutchison Whampoa has said it has more than 10 million global 3G subscribers.

The Hong Kong-based company, which hopes to raise up to €2.5 billion ($3.03 billion) by listing its Italian 3G operation on the Milan bourse later this year, had previously reported 9.4 million users as of late August.

The company is investing roughly $25 billion globally in multimedia-enabled 3G. Its rival carriers include the UK-based Vodafone Group Plc.

Hutchison, controlled by Hong Kong's richest tycoon, Li Ka-shing, also operates 3G networks in markets including the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Sweden.
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iPods skyrockets Apple's revenues
San Francisco: Sales of iPod music players have pushed Apple Computer to record revenues and earnings as the net quarterly profit increased fourfold to $430 million..

Apple says it has shipped 1.2 million Macintosh computers and 6.45 million iPods during the fiscal fourth-quarter representing 48 per cent growth in Macs and 220 per cent growth in iPods year-over-year.

Revenues hit $3.68 billion for the quarter ended September 24, up 56 per cent from a year ago and bringing the full-year revenue figure to over 13.9 billion.

The net profit for the fiscal year jumped to $1.33 billion, a five-fold increase from the prior year.

The earnings for the quarter amounted to 38 cents a share, better than the average analyst forecast of 37 cents per share.
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Microsoft, Yahoo strike a deal for messaging
Seattle: Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have struck a deal to make respective instant messaging programs work together.

The agreement would allow users of both services to send and receive messages, regardless of which system they were using. Before this the systems did not work with each other.

Microsoft had earlier been in talks with AOL over possible partnerships with Microsoft's MSN online unit.

Spokesmen for Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL declined to comment.

The Microsoft — Yahoo tie up is likely to affect AOL'S instant-messaging product, aim, which had more than 53-million unique US users in August, compared to about 29 million for the competing MSN messenger and 23 million for yahoo's messenger, according to Nielsen / net ratings.
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