Aegis to hire 11,000 people globally in FY12

Aegis, the BPO arm of USD 15-billion Essar Group , today said it plans to add about 11,000 people globally, including India , during the financial year 2011-12.

Aegis has more than 50,000 employees across 11 countries. "Globally, we should add 11,000 people by March 2012," Aegis MD and Global CEO Aparup Sengupta said here.

He, however, declined to comment on country-specific details.

The company serves verticals such as BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), telecom, retail, healthcare, travel and hospitality, consumer goods and technology.

Aegis has recently bagged a contract worth USD 2 billion from Saudi Telecom for managing the customer care operations of the telecom firm.

As part of the deal, Aegis and Saudi Telecom Company (STC) will form an equal stake joint venture 'Contact Centre Company (CCC)' to provide customer care services to over 28 million STC customers in Saudi Arabia .

In the first phase, STC would transfer about 550 agents across two centres in Riyadh and Jeddah and the remaining 4,500 STC customer care agents would become part of the Aegis family over the next 18-24 months.

Sengupta had said the company will ramp up the CCC team to 10,000 in next two years.

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Strong IP regime will benefit Indian economy: Microsoft

Expressing hope the software piracy rate in India will come down in coming years, a top Microsoft official has said a strong intellectual property rights regime will be critical and beneficial to growth of the country's economy.

"Developing a strong IP regime is critical (for India's growth). It is fundamental to the Indian government and economic growth. IP protection ends up being good for the country's own economic development, for tax revenues, for driving a culture of innovation, of invention and of creativity...," Microsoft Associate General Counsel (Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting) David Finn told PTI here.

Estimates show that software piracy rate in India is around 65 per cent. Globally, counterfeiting and piracy activities cause billions of dollars worth of economic losses and affect millions of jobs.

"I am very optimistic and am encouraged by what I have seen in India... The piracy rate will reduce and I am optimistic that the piracy rate will continue to come down in India, both because of some of the positive signs I have seen and also because ultimately strong IPR protection helps the Indian government and the Indian economy," he said.

Describing the menace of software piracy as a "challenging and complex problem", Finn noted that there are many kinds of piracy in India, including hard disc loading and underlicensing.

Google unveils Android software to run on tablets

Google Inc has fixed some shortcomings in its tablet computer strategy, as the Internet search giant steps up efforts to break into a nascent market dominated by Apple.

Google showcased on Wednesday the first version of its Android software designed to run on tablets with larger screens and greater computing horsepower, allowing for a sleeker and theoretically faster interface with built-in video conferencing.

The company also introduced a new way for developers to make money by building applications that run on Android.

The changes ratchet up the competition in the fast-growing tablet PC market, for which Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft are also developing rival software.

Analysts said "Honeycomb", while addressing a couple perceived flaws in the operating system when used for tablets as opposed to smartphones, was unlikely to immediately shift the balance of power.

"It closed the gap quite a bit," said BGC analyst Colin Gillis. But, he said "there was nothing there that was going to make me wait in line overnight," referring to the lines of customers who waited outside retail stores when Apple introduced the iPad in April.

Unreleased Apple iPad spotted at News Corp event

Spotted at Rupert Murdoch's splashy digital newspaper launch on Wednesday: a prototype of Apple's newest iPad.

A Reuters eyewitness saw what appeared to be a working model of the next iPad with a front-facing camera at the top edge of the glass screen at a press conference to mark the debut of News Corp's Daily online paper in New York on Wednesday.

A source with knowledge of the device confirmed its existence, adding that the final release model could have other features. News Corp and Apple declined to comment.

The next version of Apple's popular tablet computer is expected to be announced in the next few months.

Manufacturing sources have said it will sport two cameras -- one in the front and one in the back -- enabling users to make video calls.

News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch along with Apple executive Eddy Cue unveiled the Daily, a digital newspaper created from scratch for the iPad at a press conference in New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim museum.

First iPad newspaper debuts at 14 cents/day

A daily newspaper designed by News Corp. exclusively for Apple's iPad is available for $40 annually, comparable to what some big-city publishers charge monthly to deliver their print editions.

The digital newspaper, called The Daily, debuted Wednesday in Apple Inc.'s App Store. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch unveiled it in New York after weeks of anticipation.

The Daily is the latest example of how media companies are trying to mine the iPad's popularity for new streams of revenue. Last month, a company backed by The New York Times Co., The Washington Post Co. and USA Today publisher Gannett Co. launched Ongo, a website that, for $7 a month, pulls together stories from various outlets in one place and lays them out in a clean, ad-free format.

Newspaper publishers are especially desperate because the print advertising revenue they have traditionally relied upon has been falling for the past four years.

News Corp. hasn't been as hard hit as many publishers, mostly because it can fall back on revenue coming from its ownership of the Fox television network and the 20th Century Fox movie studio. News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers able to sell a large number of digital subscriptions.