Alibaba share price doubles

In a very quiet week worldwide, the IPO of Alibaba.com dominated the international ICT market. At home, Microsoft`s investment in Blue Label Telecoms stole the limelight in the local media.

* Good Q1 numbers from Net 1 UEPS, with revenue up 14% and income up 19%.
* A positive trading update from African Cellular Towers.
* A negative trading update from Reunert.
* Kabo Capital invested in FoneWorx holdings. This BEE deal results in Kabo Capital owning 30% of the issued shares of FoneWorx.
* Lereko Metier Capital Group, Mvelaphanda Group and Regiments Capital made a R400 million investment in Vox Telecom. This deal raises the black ownership in Vox Telecom to about 41.5% and will be used for the acquisitions of Absa Internet Access and Storm Telecom.
* Microsoft made a 12% investment in Blue Label Telecoms, a company that is to be listed on the JSE this week.
* Unishe made a 26% investment in PC-Ware SA. Unishe, a BEE entity, is jointly owned by Lefatshe Technologies and Unicus Business Solutions.
* Vodacom made a 35 % investment in XLink Communications, SA`s largest provider of electronic fund transfers.
* Dynamic Visual Technologies Holding (DVT) listed on AltX. DVT is an empowered software and services business that provides business solutions, custom solutions, professional services and specialist services such as systems integration.
* Channel Data was appointed the local distributor for Cyberoam, a manufacturer of identity-based unified threat management appliances.

* Satisfactory Q3 numbers from Maroc Telecom.

According to IDC, the worldwide market for telecommunications infrastructure equipment will exceed $109.9 billion in 2011.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Dell acquired EqualLogic, a storage start-up, for $1.4 billion. This is the third acquisition by Dell this year and only the fourth in its history. The deal may have serious repercussions for EMC and its current relationship with Dell for the supply of disks.
* Logitech purchased WiLife, a provider of a video solution for home and office self-monitoring.
* Symantec bought Vontu, a data loss prevention company, for $350 million. This deal follows similar ones by McAfee and Websense.
* Xiotech, a provider of data storage and data protection products and services, bought Seagate`s Advanced Storage Architecture Group.
* TomTom announced it has substantially raised the value of its bid for TeleAtlas, the mapping company, and taken a shareholding of 28% in the company, thus seeing off the potential challenge from Garmin.
* The private equity buy-out of Andrew`s satellite communications business.
* Very good quarterly figures from Nvidia and Swisscom AG.
* Good quarterly numbers from BMC Software, Capgemini, Cisco, Qualcomm and Trend Micro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Bell Canada, LogicaCMG, Mitac International and Sun Microsystems (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from BT Group, Deutsche Telekom, Nortel Networks (but back in the black), NTT and Time Warner.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Borland Software.
* A quarterly loss from Intelsat.
* A planned IPO on the LSE by Sophos, the IT security company.
* An excellent IPO by Alibaba.com, whose share price more than doubled on its first day of trading. It became Asia`s second-largest Internet company by market value, behind Yahoo Japan. It was the largest IPO by an e-commerce company since Google.

* Vodafone taking a 25% stake in Telekom Malaysia`s mobile phone division when the company is separated from its landline parent early next year.
* The sell-off by Deutsche Telekom of its media and broadcast services business.

* According to IDC, the worldwide market for telecommunications infrastructure equipment will exceed $109.9 billion in 2011, increasing at a CAGR of 4.2%.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.2%
* Nasdaq: Down 6.5%
* Top SA share movements: Celcom (-11.1%), Cyberhost (+11.1%), Huge Group (+9.5%), Ideco (+10%), Jasco (+11.3%), Labat Africa (+31.3%), SAB&T Ubuntu (-12.8%) and Vox Telecom (+13.8%)

Hamilton Ratshefola, chairman of DVT and CEO of Cornastone, was named CSSA`s IT personality of the year, an award that is presented by the CSSA in association with Gartner, GIBS and ITWeb.

In addition, the Sunday Times published its 2007 Top 100. From a technology perspective, Digicore was at number two, MTN at number 14, EOH at 21 and Naspers at 23.