American Movil moves into Europe

The international ICT market highlights last week included moves by Carlos Slim (American Movil) into Europe, the news from ICANN and several $1 billion+ deals involving private equity companies, Microsoft and Telefonica.

* An interim loss from Stella Vista, with revenue also down 39.6%.
* Good year-end figures from Mix Telematics, with revenue up 14.9% and profit up 44.4%.
* Government has gazetted the ICT charter, almost a decade after the initial discussions began regarding its formulation.
* The appointments of Derrick Kotze as CEO of the Mobile Applications Laboratory Southern Africa (mLab SA); Louis Parker as CEO of ATEC Systems and Technologies; Paul Rollason as UK country manager for Qorus Software; Lindiwe Sisulu as minister of public services and administration, following the death of Roy Padayachie; and Marco van Niekerk as CEO of Incredible Connection.
* The resignations of Alan Holloway, CEO of Ansys; and Sipho Maseko, MD of Vodacom SA and COO of Vodacom Group.

Government has gazetted the ICT charter, almost a decade after the initial discussions began regarding its formulation.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Convergence Partners is launching a $500 million African fund to invest in ICT on the continent, and an initial investment of $35 million has already been given by the IFC, an arm of the World Bank.
* ICANN said there is only one application for the .africa Top Level Domain (TLD), ie, UniForum SA, the organisation officially endorsed by the African Union. If successful, when the names are released early next year, it will be able to allocate .africa names to the public and will trade as Registry.Africa.
* Intelsat plans to launch two new satellite platforms that will go into service in 2015 and 2016, which will significantly enhance the capacity available across the continent.
* The appointments of Tebogo Mogapi as CEO of Lonestar Cell MTN in Liberia; Walter Mech, CEO of Garmin's sub-Saharan Africa unit; and Mazen Mroue as CEO of MTN Uganda.
* The resignation of Mazen Mroue, CEO of Lonestar Cell MTN in Liberia.

* Apax Partners and JMI Partners acquired Paradigm, a software provider for the oil and gas industry, for $1 billion.
* Autodesk bought Vela Systems, a provider of cloud-based field management software for the construction industry.
* HTC purchased S3 Graphics, in a move that will improve the former's position in its patent fight with Apple.
* Microsoft acquired Yammer, a social networking software company, for $1.2 billion.
* Motorola Solutions bought Psion, the UK-based company famous for the invention of the original PDA. The deal was worth $200 million.
* Nokia purchased Scalado, an imaging specialist.
* TDS acquired Vital Support Systems, a provider of enterprise solutions for IT infrastructure, for $45 million.
* Telefonica sold off nearly half of its stake (4.56%) in China Unicom, for EUR1.13 billion.
* Nokia disposed of its luxury phone division, Vertu, to a private equity group.
* America Movil, which is owned by Carlos Slim, made a 21% investment in Telekom Austria. American Movil is also looking to boost its shareholding in KPN as part of its planned expansion into Europe.
* Eastman Kodak has filed its 1 100+ imaging systems and services patents for auction.
* ICANN said almost 2 000 applications have been made for new TLDs, with Amazon and Google looking set to go head-to-head to own the potential successors to the .com domain.
* Donald Brydon was appointed non-executive chairman of Sage Group (UK).
* Expected IPOs in the next 12 months from AppSense, a provider of user virtualisation technology; Atlassian, a developer tools maker; CollabNet, a provider of Web-based software development tools; Marin Software, a company that provides an online advertising management platform; Rapid7, a maker of network security software; Rally Software, a provider of project management tools; and Tableau Software, a data analysis company.

* International:
* France Telecom buying the 51% stake in Dailymotion, a video-sharing Web site, that it doesn't already own.
* The winner in the bid for Kewill, the UK-based logistics software company. Symphony, a US private equity group with a bid of £99.5 million, has just capped the previous bid by a rival buy-out firm.
* Confirmation that Dell has been successful in its bid for Quest Software.

* Africa:
* A possible sell-off by Telkom SA of some of its iWayAfrica assets.

* South Africa:
* New appointments at Vodacom.
* Further developments regarding Telkom SA.

* The worldwide media tablet forecast for 2012 is 107.4 million units, rising to 222.1 million shipments by 2016, according to IDC.
* Worldwide systems management software will achieve a five-year CAGR of 5.7% through 2016, predicts IDC.
* BYOD is the top concern for enterprise mobile security, according to a Gartner survey.
* The HDD industry reached a record $9.6 billion in revenue in Q1, as a direct result of the higher average selling prices that compensated for the wreckage and loss in shipments following the floods in Thailand, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Market report.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.5%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+10.5%), Gijima (+7.9%), Labat Africa (+11.8%), MICROmega Holdings (-13%), Mix Telematics (+9.2%), PBT (-10.4%), Poynting (+11.8%), SecureData (-8.8%), Stella Vista (-33.3%) and TCS (-50%)

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Gartner identified the 10 technologies and trends that will have the biggest impact for most organisations in 2012.

They are:
1. Media tablets and beyond
2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
3. Contextual and social user experience
4. The Internet of things
5. App stores and marketplaces
6. Next-generation analytics
7. Big data
8. In-memory computing
9. Extreme low-energy servers
10. Cloud computing

Gartner analysts have shared their recommendations for how to manage these technologies and trends before they take over an organisation's IT operations.