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World business quick take

■ Trade
US rules against TV imports
The sale of Chinese and Malaysian televisions at Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other US retailers is harm-ing producers in the US, a federal trade agency ruled, in a decision that may lead to the imposition of import tariffs. The preliminary ruling by the US Interna-tional Trade Commission is aimed at overseas com-panies including Sichuan Changhong Electric Co and Hisense Electric Co, which sold US$458 million worth of TVs to the US last year, up more than fivefold from 2001. Makers in the US are seeking duties of up to 84 percent, saying the goods are being dumped. The Commerce Department must still rule on the case. The dispute underlines the transformation of the industry. In the 1980s, US companies such as RCA Corp and Zenith Electronics Corp said Japanese com-panies would destroy the US television industry. Now, five of the six companies that make TVs in the US are Japanese.

■ Software
Microsoft settles case
Microsoft Corp has agreed to pay as much as US$21 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it overcharged West Virginia consumers for its Windows operating system. West Virginia also agreed to drop its challenge of an antitrust settlement Microsoft reached with the Bush administration and nine states, leaving Mass-achusetts to pursue the appeal alone, Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said. As part of the settlement, Microsoft will give con-sumers up to US$18 million worth of computer soft-ware. State schools will get IS$1 million and one half of unclaimed funds. In 2001 a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court finding that Microsoft illegally acted to protect its Win-dows monopoly.

■ Airlines
US carriers offer e-mail
Continental Airlines and United Airlines are rushing to add two-way e-mail to existing in-flight technology supplied by Verizon's Airfone JetConnect. A spokeswoman for United said the carrier would offer the e-mail service on selected flights starting yesterday and on its entire domestic fleet by the end of the year. A Continental spokeswoman said its first installations of the full e-mail service will start on its fleet of Boeing 757s by the end of this month. To use the service, passengers plug laptop jacks into a port on one of those Airfone hand-sets set in the back of seats, which few people ever actually use to make a call because of high prices and unreliability. Prices for JetConnect with e-mail are expected to be around US$15 per flight, plus around US$0.10 per kilobyte of data in excess of 2 kilobytes.

■ Bicycles
Tracing service offered
An affiliate of Japan's Matsushita Electric Indus-trial said yesterday it will launch the world's first electric bicycles equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) enabling owners to trace stolen bikes. National Bicycle Industrial Co Ltd will launch the electric power-assisted bicycles in Japan in mid-August. Prices will range from Japanese Yen 74,800 (US$637) to Japanese Yen 124,800, not much different from the models currently available. The GPS is linked to SECOM Co Ltd and the users can locate their bikes in real time, National Bi-cycle said in a statement. Users will have to pay Japanese Yen 900 a month to SECOM for the service. The company "hopes that the GPS feature will deter theft," president Hiroshi Nakagawa said.

Agencies
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