Software company Oracle Friday announced revenue increase of 17 percent to 469 million U.S. dollars in the quater ended Nov. 30 for the Asia Pacific region.

"Our strong performance for applications business in key industries, ......is attributed to the favorable market environment and our successful product strategy," Arics Poon, managing director of Oracle South China and Hong Kong, told a press conference here on Friday.

The increasingly closer economic ties between Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the rest of China are driving more enterprises to develop advanced IT platform to manage cross-border business activities, said a statement issued by the company.

In the three months up to the end of last November, Oracle's operation in the Asia Pacific region accounted for about 14 percent of its worldwide total revenues.

The company, majoring in enterprises application software, will see steady growth in the year 2006.

Small and middle-sized enterprises (SME) are expected to become potential market for the company in this year.

The SME segment, comprising companies with annual revenue of less than 500 million U.S. dollars, has contributed more than 50 percent of Oracle's revenues in the Asia Pacific region, said Poon.

Oracle, however, declined to give specific growth target for this year.

Source: Xinhua