A round-up of today's other stories in brief...

Zutec scoops contracts worth over €2m

Zutec, which sells web-based software for building and asset management, has landed contracts worth more than €2 million in Australia and the Middle East over the past three months.

Zutec has secured a €1.3 million contract from the consortium managing the €807 million passenger terminal at the new Doha International airport in Qatar. In Australia, Zutec has won a contract with Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, worth €515,000, and a €295,000 contract as part of the development of Victoria’s new Royal Children’s Hospital.

Zutec is concluding a BES fundraising round of €500,000.

Only one in five companies using e-commerce to sell, says CSO

JUST 21 per cent of Irish businesses are using e-commerce to sell their products, and online accounts for just 24 per cent of sales at firms who do sell over the internet, according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The Information Society Statistics on the enterprise sector, which were published this week, show that manufacturers were most likely to sell using e-commerce with 31 per cent participation. However, the use of e-commerce for purchasing by manufacturers has fallen from 63 per cent in 2009 to 49 per cent this year.

Just 11 per cent of construction firms sell using e-commerce, although 38 per cent use some form of electronic purchasing. In the services sector 20 per cent of firms sell online and 43 per cent make purchases online.

Google's Android system closes gap

Google’s Android mobile operating system has closed the gap on market leader Nokia’s Symbian, just two years after its launch.

“There are over 300,000 Android phones activated each day,” Andrew Rubin, head of Google’s Android business, said.

Android, which is offered free to cellphone vendors, still trailed Symbian globally in the September quarter by a wide margin. But it was ahead of Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s Blackberry.

A combined daily average of 218,000 Android phones were sold in the July- September quarter.

Symbian sold roughly 325,000 smartphones a day in the same period, according to research firm Canalys.

Movidius secures AIB investment

Movidius, the maker of chips that enable video editing and 3D display on mobile devices, has secured a €940,000 investment from the AIB Seed Capital Fund, which is co-managed by Enterprise Equity Venture Capital.

Founded in 2005 by semiconductor executives Seán Mitchell and David Moloney, Movidius has raised $21.2 million of institutional investment since 2008.

The company will use the funding to expand in the US and Asia where it is marketing its Myriad 3D platform to mobile devicemakers. It allows 3D images to be displayed without the need for special glasses.

Movidius employs 53 in offices in Dublin, Belfast, Hong Kong and Romania.