Technology will keep getting better and better rather than plateauing out, with the humble keyboard making way for speech recognition software as standard, Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates said on Thursday.

"I'm often asked, is the technology revolution going to reach an end? Is the improvement in the chips and the software, will that start to slow down as we reach some limits?" he told a forum in Beijing.

"The answer is--certainly in the decades ahead--we don't see any limits. We see in fact the power will just get better and better."

In the future, students' textbooks would be replaced by individual electronic tablets that would be cheap, multimedia, and connected to the Internet, predicted Gates, the world's richest man with an estimated $56 billion fortune.

"We really see no limits in terms of bandwidth, connecting these systems together. New wireless approaches will let us reach out into rural areas, will let us have very good, high bandwidth without wired systems," Gates said.

And television would become fully wired.

"We see TV changing to use the Internet because now we have enough bandwidth to do not just normal video but also movies or business meetings--video of any type. That's certainly new for the Internet," he said.

"Five years ago we talked about music on the Internet, we talked about photos on the Internet, but video was not a mainstream thing. Today, it's very mainstream. For all of these things we're just at the beginning of what technology can do."

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

India has emerged as the world's top investment destination, along with China, in the eyes of the world's 20 most powerful bankers, a latest study shows.

In a survey conducted by Washington-based Financial Services Forum, India and China have both been ranked as the place of most attractive investment opportunities by CEOs of world's leading banking and financial services firms.

India has moved up the ranking from its second position in the previous bi-annual survey released in October last year, while China has managed to retain its top slot.

The survey, in which the CEOs named protectionism as the biggest threat to global economy, assumes significance as the Forum represents some of the biggest and influential names on the Wall Street and other leading global financial markets.

The think-tank is chaired by the world's largest banking group Citigroup's CEO Charles Prince and represents CEOs of 20 of the Wall Street's biggest firms--Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and Lehman Brothers among others.

The 20 CEOs ranked both China and India as the best investment destination with a score of 4.13 points each in the latest survey that was carried out in the first fortnight of April. In the October survey, China had topped the list with a score of 3.9 on a one-to-five scale, while India had come close second with a score of 3.7 points.

India was ranked by at the second position a year ago as well with a score of 4.38 points, behind China's 4.69 points.

CEOs named restrictive trade policies as the most serious threat to the world economy with a score of 3.93, ahead of other issues like terrorism and energy prices.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

Zydus Cadila, a city-based pharmaceutical company, on Wednesday acquired 100 per cent stakes of Nippon Universal Pharmaceutical Ltd., a Japanese pharma company with its headquarters in Tokyo.

This is its second overseas acquisition, the first being Alpharma France in 2003.

The group has also recently moved into derma market in India valued at Rs 1500 crore, with the acquisition of Mumbai-based Liva Healthcare. At present, the company operates in 40 countries. This acquisition would provide the group with critcal access to a ready manufacturing and marketing base as well as a strong distribution reach in Japan.

Nippon reaches out to as many as 4,000 hospitals and clinics across the country. With the generics market valued at $3 billion stands at 5 per cent of the pharma market in Japan in terms of value, Chairman and Md Zydus Cadila Pankaj Patel said, “As the generic market in Japan is just opening up, post-2010 this market would be a major growth driver for global business of the company. The group has identified a new product development programme that will feed at least 5 to 6 products annually to portfolio and build a basket of 50 products over next four years.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com