Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Winternals Software LP, a privately held company that develops recovery and data protection tools, and the host of the well-known Sysinternals free toolset.

NEW YORK: According to recent reports, Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. have formed a four-year alliance to develop and sell products that aim to give people more sophisticated ways to communicate with each other.

The wide-ranging deal, which is being expected to be extended, is focused on selling high-tech business communications offerings to corporations. This announcement was made on Tuesday; however, no financial details were released.

Amsterdam -- Royal Philips Electronics NV reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and revenue growth on sales of medical scanners. The company also announced a 1.5 billion-euro ($ 1.89 billion) stock buyback.

Earnings before interest and tax increased to 367 million euros compared with the 316 million-euro median estimate of analysts. Sales also rose 10 percent to 7.6 billion euros. However, net income fell to 301 million euros because Philips had a gain from selling Navteq Corp. shares last year.

Farnborough, England -- European plane maker, Airbus, has unveiled a long-awaited revamp of its discredited A350 mid-sized jet on Monday to a bid to regain ground lost to US rival Boeing Co.

This extra-wide bodied A350 XWB, would be a step ahead of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, according to the Toulouse-based group.

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have developed a wireless data chip that can store 100 pages of text or 15 seconds of video on a dot about half the size of a rice grain, with potentially dramatic applications in everything from health care to photography and marketing, HP said late on Sunday.

Nike and Apple announced on Thursday that it would officially launch the first product as a result of their partnership on Friday. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit, retailing for $ 29 USD, allows Nike's ready footwear to communicate with the iPod Nano.

The accessory will be available through Apple's online and offline locations, as well on Nike.com, in the company's 'Niketown' stores, and in select retail locations. With the device attached to the shoe, audible updates on speed, distance ran, and calories burned would be made available.

STOCKHOLM: Sony Ericsson launched the reporting season for leading mobile phone makers with a doubling of second-quarter earnings to a record high on Thursday and raised its forecast for total industry sales this year.

Analysts said the forecast-beating figures from the fourth-largest global player, owned by Japan's Sony and Sweden's Ericsson, boded well for larger rivals Nokia, Motorola, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, but they saw markets getting tougher next year.

MySpace has knocked e-mail giant Yahoo out of the No. 1 ranking for most page views, as tabulated by top Internet tracker Hitwise.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., garnered 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the first week in July 2006, for the first time earning the No. 1 spot on the hit list for its homepage. MySpace topped Yahoo Mail, Yahoo, Google and MSN.