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Lenovo takes top spot

The company has displaced HP as the worldwide number one PC supplier.

Paul Booth
By Paul Booth
Johannesburg, 15 Oct 2012

The international ICT world was dominated last week with the latest PC figures, which showed Lenovo displacing HP as the worldwide number one supplier.

The allegations circling in the USA regarding the business practices of the two leading Chinese networking/telecommunications equipment suppliers, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, also took the spotlight.

At home, it was a very quiet week, with Alton's interim loss being one of the leading stories.

Key local news of the past week

* Mediocre interim numbers from ISA, with revenue down 17.6% and profit down 11.8%.
* An interim loss from Altron, although revenue up 11.2%.
* Muvoni Technology Group acquired the IP assets of ZNG related to the software developed by the latter, which is used to check criminal records against the SAPS database. The deal was worth R6.5 million.
* Vodacom has officially launched LTE in SA.
* Eileen Wilton was named interim CEO of Gijima.

Key African news

Look out for further developments in the USA regarding the 'statuses' of Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

* HIS Holding bought up to 931 MTN towers in Cote d'Ivorie and up to 827 MTN towers in Cameroon for $284 million.
* The appointments of Riaan Badenhorst as head of Operations of the African region for Kaspersky Labs; Louis Lubala as MD of Airtel DRC; and Antoine Pamboro as MD of Airtel Gabon.
* Subscriber numbers in sub-Saharan Africa for mobile and fixed-line telephones will reach 266.1 million by 2017, while Internet subscribers will hit 77.5 million, according to research by Frost & Sullivan.
* The leading ICT economies in Africa in 2011 were Seychelles, followed by Mauritius and South Africa at numbers 70, 74 and 91 respectively in the global index, all positions being down slightly from 2010, according to the ITU.

Key international news

* Accenture acquired avVenta Worldwide, a digital production services provider.
* Bain Capital purchased Atento, the call centre business of Telefonica, for EUR1 billion+.
* Kobo, the e-reading company, bought the French digital software company Aquafades.
* Molex acquired Global Medical Electronics, a specialist in designing and manufacturing custom medical interconnect products.
* TeleTech Holdings purchased Guidon Performance Solutions, a management consulting firm.
* Telenor made an additional investment in Uninor (India), thus becoming its major investor.
* Millicom International Cellular intends to terminate the registration of its common stock and its reporting obligations in the USA.
* Good quarterly numbers from Infosys.
* Mediocre quarterly results from HTC and Software AG.
* The appointments of Michael McAndrew as president and COO of Black Box; and Frank Kern (ex-IBM executive) as CEO of Aricent Group, a technology services company.
* The resignations of Jay Bhatt, president and CEO of Progress Software; Sudip Nandy, CEO of Aricent Group; and Marjorie Scardino, vice-chairman of Nokia.
* A confirmed IPO in London this year by Megafon, Russia's second largest mobile phone operator.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Workday, a cloud-based HR software provider.

Look out for

* International:
- The possible acquisition of Sprint Nextel by Softbank, in a deal that could be worth as much as $12.8 billion.
- New initiatives from ST-Ericsson following the appointment of an external advisor to look at various strategic options for the loss-making company.
- Further developments in the USA regarding the 'statuses' of Huawei Technologies and ZTE, following criticism of their business practices by a US select committee.
* Africa:
- A possible sale by Vivendi of its stake (53%) in Maroc Telecom.
* South Africa:
- Further developments regarding Telkom and clarification on the outstanding cautionary by Business Connexion.

Research results and predictions

* Bring-your-own-device is one of the fastest growing and increasingly difficult issues for CIOs to manage, according to a global survey commissioned by Citrix Systems.
* The worldwide PC market shrank 8.3% in Q3 to 87.5 million shipments, with Lenovo taking over the number slot from HP, according to Gartner.
* Global revenue from telecommunications services has now reached $1.5 trillion, according to the ITU. South Korea was also rated as the world's most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland.

Stock market changes

* JSE All share index: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.9%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-10.5%), Altech (-7.9%), Labat Africa (+81.8%) and Poynting (-8.9%)

Final word

Fortune magazine has just published its latest listing of its 'Top 50 Women in Business'. From a technology perspective, the following are of note:

1: Ginni Rometty, president, CEO and chairman of IBM
3: Meg Whitman, president and CEO of HP
7: Ursula Burns, CEO and chairman of Xerox
8: Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
10: Safra Catz, president and CFO of Oracle
14: Marissa Mayer, president and CEO of Yahoo
18: Susan Wojcicki, product management and engineering at Google
23: Bridget Van Kralingen, SVP Global Services at IBM

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