Monday, October 8, 2001		Lens on IT

A file photo of a South Korean employee from Hynix Semiconductor checking a computer at the Ichon factory, about 65km southeast of Seoul. Hynix Semiconductor said it will sell shares in Maxtor, a U.S. desktop computer disk driver maker, for more than $100 million.

Altec CEO Nils Petterson speaks in Panama City, in this file photo. Following devastating attacks on the Wolrd Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, many data-reliant businesses are looking to Panama for a safe digital information storage. 

Chinese women talk on their mobile phones in Shanghai. China's government is considering issuing licenses to at least two more cellphone operators, another sign that it is intent on making its mobile-phone market more competitive, a newspaper reported last week. China has already surpassed the USA as the world's largest mobile phone market with 125 million subscribers according to official statistics in August.

A young woman displays her new third-generation (3G) mobile phone FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access) as sales kicked off for the world's most advanced generation of mobile phones at mobile operator NTT DoCoMo Inc's shop in Tokyo. Carrying the hopes of an industry, DoCoMo is now selling FOMA, capable of zipping Internet data and video across airwaves at accelerated speeds to users in Tokyo's greater metropolitan area.

— Reuters photos