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World Business Quick Take

■ Telcos
Vodafone, Google join forces
Vodafone Group PLC, the world's largest mobile phone network operator, said yesterday it had agreed with Google to develop maps for mobile telephones. The company said it will, in conjunction with Google Maps, provide easy-to-use maps and local listings, as well as local search and navigation capabilities. "Vodafone sees Google Maps as a new milestone in the relationship that both companies are developing. It is a prime example of how Vodafone, through its location service and distribution scale, can complement Google's products and unlock mass-market access to exciting services," said Frank Rovekamp, global chief marketing officer of Vodafone.

■ Electronics
LG sues China's TTE
LG Electronics Inc, South Korea's second-largest electronics maker, sued China's TTE Corp and Hong Kong subsidiary TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd (TCL多媒體科技控股) for alleged infringement of TV patents. LG Electronics filed a complaint against the two companies in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Saturday, claiming they infringed on four digital TV patents, the Seoul-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. LG filed the complaint after discussions that began in 2005 collapsed, the statement said.

■ Automobiles
Toyota to build India factory
Toyota Motor Corp plans to build a new factory in India by 2010 to produce small cars as it tries to tap the growing automobile market in developing countries, a report said yesterday. Japan's biggest automaker plans to spend ?40 billion (US$330 million) to ?50 billion on the plant, which will be built near the company's first assembly plant in Bangalore, the Nikkei Shimbun reported, without saying how it got the information. With car sales slowing in developed markets like the US and Japan, companies are increasingly turning to developing areas like Brazil, China, Russia and India to ramp up production closer to growth markets.

■ Finance
Inflation forecast lowered
Australia's central bank on Monday lowered its inflation forecast, signaling that key interest rates were unlikely to be increased from their current six-year high of 6.25 percent, analysts said. The Reserve Bank of Australia said in its quarterly statement on monetary policy that underlying inflation was expected to ease to 2.75 percent at the end of this year and through 2008, from around three percent. It forecast that the headline rate of annual inflation will be below 2 percent in the middle of this year, the annual rate having been 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

■ Internet
MySpace adds filter
News Corp's social networking Web site MySpace said it started using a program that blocks videos containing unauthorized content from its pages. The filter uses digital fingerprint technology to screen videos uploaded by users on their MySpace pages and remove them if they are protected by copy-rights, MySpace said in an e-mailed statement. MySpace is taking measures against illegal downloading after YouTube was ordered by Viacom Inc to take down more than 100,000 unauthorized clips earlier this month.

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