Asia

How much income do Microsoft, Yahoo and Google earn from your free email account? Only about one quarter of a cent per month, according to new data from China, the world's largest online market.

The 470 million free email accounts registered by Chinese netizens generated $3.64 million in advertising revenue for service providers like Yahoo and Hotmail during the last three months of 2006, according to data from the Beijing office of research firm Analysys International. This indicates that the average income from a single account was only $0.0025 per month

Chinese consumers spent more than $1bn buying products from each other in online auctions during last year's Christmas season, according to a recent survey.

The world's leading online consumer auctions firm, eBay, maintained its number 2 position in the market. Ebay handled 29 percent of auctions, leaving it a distant second to local rival Taobao, which brokered more than twice as many. Taobao is a subsidiary of China's leading business-to-business auctions firm, Alibaba.

The author of a worm which caused widespread disruption to PCs and networks has attempted to repair the damage by creating software to remove it. However, security experts say the removal software is considerably less effective than the original worm.

Successful trials of a Viagra substitute have lifted the share price of its developer, Dong-a PharmTech of Korea. The drug, Zydena, or Udenafil, is already one of Korea's best selling pills, despite facing a stiff challenge from Viagra.

What the company describes as 'intercourse completion rates', were doubled to almost 70 percent for couples using the highest doses of the drug in the trial. The rate for those using a placebo was 38 per cent.

UPDATED MARCH 27: Nintendo has changed the design of its Wii games console to combat modchips, modchip developers in China have charged. Several design changes can be seen on new Wii motherboards, in photographs that appear to support these claims.

Some sources allege that the changes make it more likely the Wii could be damaged by modchip installation, we have not been able to verify this, however.