Apple profits surge 78 per cent
San Francisco: Apple Inc has reported a 78 per cent surge in quarterly profit, driven by sales of iPod digital music players. Though the results beat Wall Street expectations the guidance for the current quarter lagged behind targets set by analysts and shares of the company slipped in after-hours trade.

Apple's net income for its first fiscal quarter ended December 30 rose to a record $1.004 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $565 million, or 65 cents per share, in the corresponding quarter a year-ago. Revenue rose to $7.12 billion from $5.75 billion.

The results compared with Apple's own earlier forecast of earnings per share of 70 cents to 73 cents and revenue of $6.0 billion to $6.2 billion.

The company expects second-quarter earnings per share of 54 cents to 56 cents and revenue of $4.8 billion to $4.9 billion.
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JP Morgan reports upbeat earnings
New York: JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third-largest U.S. banking group, has reported upbeat earnings in the last quarter of 2006. The company said quarterly earnings rose 68 percent, helped by a big surge in investment banking revenue and a $622 million gain from selling its corporate trust unit to Bank of New York.

JPMorgan, which also received a boost from an increase in debt financing deals, reported fourth-quarter net income of $4.5 billion, or $1.26 a share, up from $2.7 billion, or 76 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.
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Boeing beats Airbus in aircraft orders in 2006
Boeing obtained 1,050 new aircraft orders in 2006 against Airbus' 824.

The Chicago-based Boeing also beat Airbus in the most lucrative market of wide-body jets with sales of 317 planes, compared to 134 sold by Airbus.
Airbus had a rough year in 2006 when wiring problems caused delivery schedules to go haywire for its much-hyped A380 super-jumbo jet, and delayed its delivery to customers by two years. FedEx dropped orders for 10 freighter versions of the jet. Several top executives left Airbus and its parent company.
The aircraft maker was also forced to redesign a new wide-body jet, now named the A350 XWB, because airlines and leasing companies felt it did not measure up to Boeing's fast-selling 787 Dreamliner.

Boeing has taken 448 orders for the 787, which is still in production.

Analysts however said the news was not all bad for Airbus.

Despite falling behind in orders, Airbus still had a decent year in sales. It tallied the second most orders in its history -- finishing with 287 fewer orders than its record-breaking year of 2005.
It also delivered more planes to customers than Boeing and has a slightly larger backlog of jets than the U.S. aircraft maker.
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Microsoft, Nortel to launch new products
New York: Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp have announced the launch of three new product packages. Six months ago the companies had announced they would develop products for the business market together.

The products include UC Integrated Branch, an Internet telephone and communications exchange for branch offices, scheduled for the fourth quarter; Unified Messaging, scheduled for release in the second quarter, as well as Conferencing, which adds features from Nortel Multimedia Conferencing to Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. Conferencing will hit the market in the fourth quarter.

The new products are targeted for businesses which are large enough to have an IT department said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Ballmer and Nortel say at present the industry is in the "segmented phase," with phone, e-mail and other features operating separately though a shift is taking place to the "integrated phase," with some features working together but some back-end capabilities still running independently. Ballmer says this phase will last from 2007 until 2009. The final phase is the transformation to unified communications, which is expected to begin in 2010 and beyond.

The two companies also announced that they will extend their unified product line for desktop Nortel expects the products could get the two companies $1 billion in related revenue over the next four years.
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