In Short

A round-up of today's other stories in brief:

Cisco, Apple agree to share iPhone name

Cisco Systems and Apple have agreed to share the iPhone name, but both US companies are staying tight-lipped about what future products might come from the resulting deal to collaborate on "inter-operability" between the companies' products.

Analysts said the settlement announced yesterday in Cisco's trademark-infringement lawsuit could help both firms strengthen their positions in the battle to deliver video and other applications directly to consumers' homes.

Zeus Kerravala, a network infrastructure analyst with Yankee Group, said both companies needed to be willing to share in order to make the partnership work.

"There's no company out there that understands network service like Cisco. And you could argue no other company understands user experience like Apple."

The tech giants said they had agreed to dismiss any pending legal actions regarding the iPhone trademark. - (AP)

NEC cuts outlook on slow chip sales

Struggling Japanese microchip maker NEC Electronics said it expected a bigger loss in the current business year on slow chip sales, and analysts remained sceptical about its plans to make a profit next year on cost cuts and more product focus.

NEC, a Japanese electronics conglomerate with a 70 per cent stake in NEC Electronics, also cut its operating profit forecast by 15 per cent, hit by the chip unit's sluggish performance.

NEC Electronics said it would close old production lines and slash outsourcing costs and salaries. It said it would withdraw from application-specific chips with low profit yield and cut development costs for chips that run applications like websites on mobile phones.

Instead, it will focus on chips to run cars and graphic-processing chips used in cameras, games and TVs. - (Reuters)

Canon unveils new professional camera

Canon unveiled a new digital camera for professional photographers yesterday in a bid to hold on to its top position in the camera industry.

Tokyo-based Canon is said to control almost 50 per cent of the global market for digital single-lens reflex (DSLR), high-end models with interchangeable lenses, which have higher profit margins and more stable prices than simpler models.

Canon will begin sales of the EOS-1D Mark III from late-May for an expected retail price of about 500,000 yen (€3,136). The device, with 10.1 megapixel resolution, has two image processors to allow faster processing of high-quality images. - (Reuters)