Auto market looks up, jump of 7 pc over year before

Automaker Tata Motors on Monday reported a jump of 17.98 per cent in sales during July at 48,054 units.


The homegrown firm's passenger vehicle sales in the domestic market grew by 17.33 per cent at 17,191 units in July against 14,652 units in the same month last year, the company said in a statement.


However, the company's exports in July plummeted by 33.58 per cent at 2,455 units compared with 3,696 units in the same month last year, it added.


Among individual cars, Tata Motors sold 2,475 units of its small car Nano since its launch on July 17 while Indica reported sales of 8,563 units, up 14 per cent over July 2008, Tata Motors said.


Indigo family, however, recorded sales of 3,499 units, a fall of 22 per cent over the same month last year. Sales of Sumo and Safari was flat at 2,638 units.


In the commercial vehicles segment, sales in July in the domestic market stood at 28,408 units, or up 26.93 per cent compared with 22,381 units in the same month last year.


Light commercial vehicle during the month saw an increase of 44 per cent over the last year at 17,750 units while sales of medium and heavy commercial vehicle stood at 10,658 units, up 6 per cent compared with July, 2008.


Cumulative sales of passenger vehicles in the domestic market in the four months of this fiscal were down by 4.13 per cent at 63,028 units against 65,746 units in the year-ago period, Tata Motors said.


Commercial vehicles' cumulative sales in the domestic market for the fiscal were 1,00,464 units, a jump of 7 per cent over the corresponding period in the last financial year.

Black berry Reviews

Many of us have been looking for a mobile note taking application that would be useful "in the field", since that's where we take most of our notes. Often we can't type fast enough on our mobile devices to keep up, so we jot down notes on *gasp* paper. With Evernote for Blackberry you can simply take a snapshot with your device, add a subject, comments and some tags and save it for later. When you get home you can sync everything up and have it available on your desktop or on the Web.

Prior to using Evernote for Blackberry, some people used to snap pictures of people's name tags at various events for future reference. Now you can put those in a folder in Evernote and tag, comment and archive them.

But Does it Work?
Taking text notes in Evernote for BlackBerry is straightforward and easy as are snapshot and audio notes. Trying to recognize words in some written notes can be a little sketchy, but Evernote does a pretty decent job of finding key words through a simple search. Overall the interface is a little clunky, and there seems to be no (obvious) way to add content to existing notes using the BlackBerry. Those are the only major complaints we have with it, although not being able to add to existing notes on the fly is a real bummer.

What makes this app especially useful is the ability to sync everything at once. That alone makes it an app we will continue to use. When you add BlackBerry's tagging capabilities with GPS, it becomes very powerful note taking tool indeed. Imagine being able to geotag a note and how that could be useful later. Add some snapshots, maybe a short video or audio clip and you have the makings of a very serviceable blog post or report.

Evernote for BlackBerry is certainly worth a try, check it out for yourself. It is available on the Evernote site or from BlackBerry App World. Of course there are several note taking apps for the BlackBerry, but so far this is the best one we have found, especially among the other free apps

HSBC sees profits drop by half

Banking group HSBC has seen its pre-tax profits slump by 51 percent for the first six months of 2009, tumbling to $5 billion compared to $10.2 billion for the same period a year ago.

In April HSBC Holdings raised $17.8 billion through a fully underwritten rights issue.
Meanwhile, total operating income for the half-year fell six percent to $40.2 billion, from $42.9 billion a year ago.

Group Chairman Stephen Green said in a statement that while "it may be that we have passed, or are about to pass, the bottom of the cycle in the financial markets" any recovery in the wider economy was highly uncertain.

"Our view continues to be cautious as long as a number of serious impediments to growth remain," Green added.

Earnings per ordinary share were 63 per cent lower at $0.21, compared to $0.57 for the same period last year. Watch an interview with HSBC Asia-Pacific Chairman Vincent Cheng »

Green added that the group had delivered on what it hoped to achieve, and that results and profitability overall had been ahead of expectations at the start of the year.

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"We have continued to position HSBC's balance sheet conservatively," he said, "while focusing on enhancing the capabilities which will enable us to deliver sustainable long-term growth once the current global downturn has ended."

In March HSBC announced a 62 percent slide in annual pre-tax profits to $9.3 billion. The group suffered $15.5 billion losses in its U.S. businesses, forcing it to scale back its operations in the U.S. and close its Beneficial and HFC brands with the loss of 6,100 jobs.


In April of this year, HSBC Holdings raised $17.8 billion through a fully underwritten rights issue.

HSBC serves more than 100 million customers and businesses, through 8,500 offices located in 86 countries and territories.