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After reaching a record level of $759 billion in 2007, the global real estate sector is likely to see investment decline by 30 per cent in 2008. In its latest Global Real Estate Capital Report, Jones Lang LaSalle, a realty research group, has said that the Americas and European investment markets would certainly see a fall in full year volumes and although Asia may be more resilient, volumes will not achieve the heights of 2007. While the report doesn’t give any figures for the Indian market, the investment in realty here is unlikely to be affected, says an analyst with a leading domestic brokerage.

This is because the net investment in Indian realty, which is between $5 billion and $7 billion, is still very small. However, there has been a fall of almost 20 per cent in real estate transactions all over the country, primarily due to higher home finance rates. The main factors for the downtrend in global demand, according to the report, buyers and sellers adopting ‘wait and see’ approach; prices having peaked in 2007 in many major markets; a misalignment between buyers’ and sellers’ price expectation; and more exacting due diligence which leads to longer transaction process.

PC maker Dell plans to launch low-cost desktops for the Indian market in the second week of April. Dell will purchase $23 billion computer related components from China this year. The company had announced to purchase about $ 70 billion of computer supplies and equipment from China in 2007-2009. This strategy will help Dell to reduce the price of the desktop manufactured at the Chennai plant.

Mr Rajan Anandan, vice- president and general manager, Dell India said that the company is targeting one of the high growth markets for the low-cost product. This product will be manufactured in our Chennai plant. This will be a customised product for the Indian market. But however, he refused to reveal the price of the product or the targeted market size.

The ultra low-cost PC, which was targeted by the government at Rs 10,000, failed to take off after the HCL easy PC was launched on the Linux platform. The sub 10,000 PC failed to operate on Microsoft Windows platform. The manufacturers could not afford desktop PC on Windows platform at the targeted price. With the price gap between the desktop and notebook decreasing, manufacturers are targeting to bring in low cost PCs to boost the desktop sales. Currently, the company’s manufacturing plant in India manufactures four lakh units per annum.

Coca Cola Company posted a 79 per cent jump in profit for the last quarter which is the highest growth in the Indian market. Coke’s sales in the Indian market jumped 18 per cent, by far the highest growth it has seen in any region globally. In contrast, the home market of North America posted a growth of a mere 2 per cent and the European Union 1 per cent. The growth in India was also much higher than the growth in the other developing regions like Africa and Latin America. The overall growth of the company was 6 per cent during the quarter.

Mr Neville Isdell, chairman and chief executive officer said that this has been a year of significant accomplishment and this growth was balanced across our geographies and portfolio of brands. The company said it earned $1.21 billion for the three months ending December 31, compared to a profit of $678 million, or 29 cents a share, in the year ago period.

Mobile phone-maker, Sony Ericsson, has launched two entry-level handsets, designed specially for the Indian market. The new radio phones R300i and R306i would be made in India and has been priced between Rs 3,500-5,000 respectively. Currently, the company manufactures three handset models in the country, but this is the first time the global phone-maker has launched a product specifically for the Indian consumers. The company also launched two other handsets T270 and T280 .

India is an important market for the company, and Sony Ericsson plans to achieve a sales target of 10 million handsets from the India by 2009, as said by Sudhir Mathur, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (India), General Manager.

R300i comes with Radio - FM and AM. And it is a portable radio. It also facilitates recording radio sounds. It has 8 MB memory space. It has a integrated 0.3 mega pixel Camera.It can play music in MP3 and AAC Format. It has Bluetooth Technonogy too. It has other features like Internet, MMS, Java and Music recognition. R306i is also a Radio Phone similar to that of R300i but it comes with the additional feature like Video Recording and has 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera. But it has the storage capacity of 5 MB.

All the new phones would be available in the market from January- March quarter this year. The new phones would provide advanced features including radio recording, VGA/1.3 megapixel camera, bluetooth and GPRS. The unique radio interface and the addition of an AM receiver in the new handsets show a specific focus on the Indian market specifically in rural areas.