Neotel gears up

The international and local ICT markets were quiet last week, with much of the ICT media space still covering various aspects of the aftermath from the Neotel launch.

* Excellent year-end numbers for Mincom Africa, with revenue up over 135%.
* Good annual numbers from Digicore, with revenue up 28% and profit up over 50%.
* Good interim figures from ISA, with revenue up nearly 20% and profit up 100%.
* A negative trading update from ERP.com.
* A planned R141 million rights issue by Metrofile.
* Datatec`s Logicalis bought yet another company, Computech Resources, an IBM premier business partner based in Wisconsin, USA.
* MicroStrategy, a provider of BI systems, opened a local office.
* The appointment of William Mzimba as CEO of Accenture SA.

* The appointment of Brett Goschen as CEO of Areeba, Ghana`s leading mobile phone company.
* The name change of Vmobile to Celtel Nigeria.

Semiconductor sales totalled $20.1 billion in July, up 12% from last year, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Sybase acquired Mobile 365, a mobile messaging and content delivery company.
* IBM bought Brazilian IT services provider, Global Value Solutions SA.
* Positive results announcements from ASML, Cognos, InterVoice, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Silicon Motion, Simtek and Thus.
* Negative result warnings from Carrier Access, Komag and Palm.
* A job loss announcement from Cognos.
* Planned IPOs on Nasdaq by Isilion Systems, a company that develops NAS virtualisation; and Riverbed Technology, a provider of acceleration and optimisation technologies.
* An IPO in London by Rubicon Software, a provider of CRM software.
* A planned IPO by Neuf Cegetel SA, France`s alternative fixed-line carrier.

* The winner in 3i Group and Tata Consultancy Services` battle for BPO vendor, Vertex.
* EMC`s possible buy-out of start-up, Avamar Technologies, a provider of branch or remote office backup software.
* The buyer for a 38.6% stake in OTE, the largest telecommunications operator in south-east Europe.

* Semiconductor sales totalled $20.1 billion in July, up 12% from last year, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
* Sales of network security equipment topped $2.2 billion in the first half of this year, with no significant growth being realised by any of the major players, says Infonetics Research.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.2%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.2%
* Top SA share movements: Beget (+25%), Digicore (+8.7%), I-Solutions (-18.2%), ISA (+22%), Labat Africa (-20%), Simeka (+12%), Stella Vista (+33.3%), Trematon (-9.1%) and Zaptronix (+11.1%)
* Top international share movements: Bell Canada (-76.5%), Embarcadero Technologies (+26.8%), Entrada Networks (+150%), Exabyte (-36.7%), Pegasus Communications (-40.3%) and Redback Networks (-23.6%)

The latest Fortune magazine has a listing of China`s top 100 listed companies. From a technology perspective, China Mobile (Hong Kong) is at number three, China Telecom at four, Lenovo Group at six (up from 25) and China Netcom at nine. A new entry is computer company, TPV Technology, at 22.