Webwire: OTE profit falls 54%; Vimpelcom to buy NTC

Greece's OTE said its first-quarter profit slumped 54.1% to €30.2 million ($43.3 million), on sliding revenues at mobile division Cosmote.

Vimpelcom will buy the 90% of eastern Russia's NTC held by Korea Telecom and a Sumitomo subsidiary for $420 million, then mount a compulsory acquisition offer for the remaining shares.

India's Bharti Airtel is blaming “an unforeseen technical outage” for a network failure last week which disrupted mobile services for a reported 8 million of its customers for several hours.

Canadian researchers have demonstrated a prototype smartphone built from flexible electronic paper, that is controlled through bending and folding the material.

Foxconn hopes to start assembling iPads in Brazil by July as part of the $12 billion investment plan under consideration, but is still negotiating with the government on tax breaks and faces other hurdles in a country with very high labor costs and an overvalued currency.

The iPad 2 officially debuted in China on Friday to the typical long queues, particularly outside Apple's downtown Beijing store.

Singapore's opposition party made the strongest inroads since independence during Saturday's vote, during a campaign transformed by social media and loosened restrictions on election-related internet discourse.

The Mexico City government will use SMS and social networks including Facebook and Twitter to provide early warnings of incoming earthquakes.