India's No. 2 motorcycle maker, Bajaj Auto plans to increase its stake from 25% to 30% in KTM Power Sports, Europe`s second-largest sports bike manufacturer.

During a press conference, Rajiv Bajaj, Managing director of Bajaj Auto, disclosed that the company is tightening its grip on KTM Power Sports and the stake hike would be concluded in six to eight weeks.

The Phenom II lineup by AMD was updated by the company on Monday with latest quad-core and its first triple-core Phenom II processors, across the DDR-3 memory transition in the process.

Other than this, five new Phenom II processors, three of which are quad-core chips: the 2.5-GHz, Phenom II X4 805; the 2.6-GHz X4 810; and the 2.6-GHz X4 910, were also launched by AMD. The 2.6-GHz Phenom II X3 710 and the new 2.8-GHz X3 720 "Black Edition", included in others, are basically the maiden triple-core Phenom II microprocessors by AMD.

On Sunday a well known paper put forward the latest piece of news that Microsoft Corp is mulling to provide new programs and services for mobile phones, including an "online bazaar" for software.

The report published in the paper said that the online bazaar would be for phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system.

It said, "Microsoft will also soon offer its latest version of Windows Mobile, which the report said would have a more sophisticated interface."

In a bid to acquire a majority stake in Orissa Sponge Iron & Steel, three un-listed Indian firms have jointly made an open offer to acquire 26 percent of its equity, for Rs 300 per share.

Under the arrangement, Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd along with Titanic Steel Industries and Olympian Steel Industries would acquire stake in Orissa Sponge through open offer.

The open offer is for the acquisition of 52 lakh shares of Rs 10 each of Orissa Sponge from its existing shareholders. The offer will open on April 3 and close on April 23.

Singapore - Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) extended its regional mobile customer base by 35 per cent, or 61 million, to 232 million subscribers, the company said Monday.

Despite stiff competition and the global economic crisis, SingTel mobile subscribers in the region reached 232 million on December 31, 2008, the company said in a statement.

The association of IT-BPO industry, NASSCOM has revised the growth projections of software and service exports to 16-17% for the financial year 2008-09 at $47 billion as compared to its earlier estimates of $50 billion. The body said that demand in the segment declined under the impact of global slowdown that led it to revise its revenue growth targets.