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Business Quick Take

■ MOBILE PHONES

Global use to hit 50%

The number of mobile phone users will pass the number of non-users this year for the first time, the UN's telecoms agency said. Ownership rates in developing countries are rising fastest, with Brazil, Russia, India and China totaling 1 billion subscribers last year, the International Telecommunication Union said. In 2000, only 12 percent of the global population had a mobile phone. "At current growth rates, global mobile penetration is expected to reach 50 percent by early 2008," according to ITU's newsletter for last month. This would amount to more than 3.3 billion subscriptions worldwide.

■ ELECTRONICS

Fitch upgrades Sony

Fitch Ratings late on Wednesday upgraded Sony Corp, judging that the company's video games and core electronics businesses were finally getting back on track. Fitch gave Sony a long-term debt rating of "A-", the seventh out of 22 levels, moving it up a category from the earlier "BBB+". The outlook was stable. Fitch noted that Sony had gained the upper hand in promoting its Blu-ray as the standard for next-generation DVDs in its showdown with Toshiba Corp's rival HD-DVD. But Sony could face trouble from a weakening US economy and an expected rise in the yen, which would make its products less competitive outside Japan, Fitch said.

■ INTERNET

Google allows joint access

Google Inc upgraded its software to let groups of people work on the same document online, in an effort to push deeper into a market dominated by Microsoft Corp. The Google Apps team edition allows users of the Web-based word-processing and spreadsheet software to invite others to view and edit documents. The files can be opened from a computer or mobile phone, Google said today in a statement. The company is positioning the software to compete with Microsoft's Office products as part of a bid to expand beyond Internet advertising sales. The programs let users store their information online rather than keeping files on personal computers.

■ BANKING

Deutsche Bank nets record

The biggest German bank, Deutsche Bank, yesterday posted a record net profit of 6.5 billion euros (US$9.5 billion) for last year and said it had no net write-downs related to the US subprime mortgage debacle. The result marked an increase of 7 percent from the figure in 2006, Deutsche Bank said in a statement. It quoted chairman Josef Ackermann as saying that in the fourth quarter of last year, "we had no net write-downs related to sub-prime, CDO [collateralized debt obligation] or RMBS [residential mortgage-backed security] exposures." In the third quarter, Deutsche Bank had marked down 2.2 billion euros to cover losses linked to the crisis and posted a loss of 837 million euros in trading income.