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World Business QUick Take

■ Communication
Web phone market to grow
The Asia-Pacific market for phones capable of using the Internet is forecast to show positive growth of 4 percent next year and continue the trend until 2010, a research agency's study said yesterday. The regional market is expected to remain fairly steady this year, stabilizing at US$2.02 billion, according to Frost & Sullivan. Internet Protocol (IP) telephony "has been growing continuously over the past few years and is poised to unseat traditional telephony," Aditya Sapru, a partner with Frost & Sullivan, told The Business Times. He noted there is still a fair amount of resistance to IP technology, "based on issues related to interoperability, security and costs."

■ Communications
Profits three years away
NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's biggest mobile-phone company, said it may take three years to profit from its foreign wireless Internet alliances as European companies begin high-speed services five years after buying licenses. "Three years from now" sales from the wireless operator's foreign partnerships for its i-mode mobile Internet system may rise and generate income, Keiji Tachikawa, a DoCoMo board member and a former chief executive of the company, said at the Etre technology conference in Cannes, France. I-mode allows users to download games and access the Web. Tokyo-based DoCoMo has exported i-mode across Europe, partnering with cellular operators including Telefonica SA in Spain, France's Bouygues Telecom SA and Royal KPN NV in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

■ Airlines
Lion Air to add 15 planes
Indonesia's top budget airline Lion Air plans to buy 15 planes to boost its fleet by nearly two-thirds, a news report said yesterday. The expansion will let the airline add several domestic destinations in eastern Indonesia -- and regional ones including South Korea, India, Hong Kong, and Australia -- later this year, The Jakarta Post newspaper said. "We've just completed the payment for the new aircraft," the paper quoted Lion Air Spokesman Hasyim Arsal Alhabsi as saying. "With these new routes, we hope to able to serve up to 60 routes by next year from the current 40 or so and increase our flight frequency to 200 flights per day from 140," Alhabsi was quoted as saying. Lion Air, Indonesia's third largest airline behind national flag-carrier Garuda and state-owned Merpati, also plans an initial public offering next year.

■ Technology
Distress-call shirt created
Singapore scientists have created a shirt that can send a distress signal if the wearer falls down, a news report said yesterday. The shirt, designed with elderly people in mind, has a built-in sensor that sends a signal to a family member's mobile phone or even to an e-mail address in case of a tumble, its creator Francis Tay said in The Straits Times newspaper. The sensor detects the speed and tilt of the fall, the report said. "When a person falls, that's bad enough. But if he falls and there's no one there to help him, it could be fatal," the paper quoted Tay as saying. Tay said in the report the shirt could be helpful in this wealthy city-state of 4 million, where it's likely that 1 in 5 people will be over 65 by 2029.

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