STOCKS TO WATCH: Infosys, iXL and Palm

Infosys shares should be worth watching Tuesday after the company said enabling companies to set up an Internet presence, or "e-enabling," would be its main growth driver.

"The major opportunities in e-commerce are in three segments, ... in e-enabling, Internet infrastructure companies and dotcoms or start-ups," CEO N.R. Narayana Murthy told Reuters.

Officials said Internet services accounted for 28.7 percent of the company's first quarter revenues but Murthy expects revenue to grow steadily.

The contribution from Internet services has seen a substantial jump over the past few years. Eight quarters ago the sector accounted for just 1.80 percent of total revenues.

Murthy said concerns about Internet e-commerce projects requiring more interaction with customers were offset by the higher margins involved.

"It's true that e-commerce would require a greater onsite presence, but we have to realize that margins in e-commerce are much higher," he said.

Infosys shares closed up 4 63/64 to 161 Friday.

iXL shares will be sliding Tuesday after it became the latest Internet consultant to disappoint its investors Friday, warning that it will take a loss in its third quarter.

It also announced the resignation of President William Nussey.

Its shares closed off 1 3/16, or 12 percent, to a 52-week low of 8 3/8 ahead of the profit warning.

First Call Corp. consensus had pegged iXL for a profit of 4 cents a share in the quarter.

Company officials said they now expects third-quarter sales to fall between 15 percent to 20 percent from the $119 million it recorded in the second quarter.

In a prepared release, iXL cited a slowdown in client purchasing of its general business strategy services and an increased sales cycle for its services targeted for the Global 1000.

iXL's profit warning comes on the heels of a similar preannouncement from fellow Internet consulting firm Viant (Nasdaq: VIAN) on Thursday.

Palm will be active after it said it will begin selling a Web-connected handheld computer, or PDA (personal digital assistant), in Japan during the first half of next year.

"We are planning to offer a Palm-based wireless Internet service in the first half of next year, between January and June," Kazuki Furuya, marketing chief of the Japan unit of Palm Computing said.

A Japanese business daily, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, reported at the weekend the service would link Palm with NTT DoCoMo, Japan's dominant mobile phone carrier, allowing users of the handheld Palm device to surf the Internet and check e-mail.

Furuya did not confirm whether his company would link up with DoCoMo, but said the service would carry a slightly lower subscription fee than the 4,000 yen ($37.82) that cell phone users typically pay.

Research firm International Data Corp (IDC) Japan said on Friday that it expects four million PDAs to be sold in Japan in 2004, about three times as many as were sold in 1999.

Furuya said the Palm wireless device will use packet transmission technology, which cuts the cost of transmitting data over the airwaves.

Palm shares ended off 1 1/8 to 42 7/8 Friday.

Reuters contributed to this report.