Best of the best

Last week was quiet on the ICT front both internationally and locally. Overseas, there were a handful of small acquisitions, while at home the several positive trading updates dominated the local ICT media space.

* Excellent interim numbers from MICROmega, with revenue up 68% and profit nearly double.
* Excellent year-end figures from unlisted XON, with revenue up 80% and profit up by 140%.
* Positive trading updates from CompuClearing, Dimension Data, EOH, MTN and Mustek.
* Bytes Document Solutions, part of the Altron Group, acquired NOR Paper Cape Town and NOR Paper Johannesburg. NOR is a supplier of papers and has a turnover in excess of R250 million.
* PIC Solutions, a credit risk management consultancy in the MEA region, has sold its ACET Processing unit to its management via an MBO transaction.
* Mardia van der Walt-Korsten, CEO of T-Systems SA, won The Business Woman of the Year award in the corporate category.
* Computer Storage Services was appointed the South African distributor for Toshiba storage devices, and Digital Channelwise Solutions was appointed distributor for Netherlands-based Sitecom, a provider of home networking products and accessories.

* Excellent interim figures from Kenya's Access Kenya, with revenue up 76% and PBT up over 50%.
* Safaricom (Kenya) bought One Communications, a data communications group and ISP, for $2.6 million (51%).
* Gateway Communications announced it has established a Central African regional office in Cameroon.
* Essar Global (India) will invest $500 million in Econet Wireless Kenya over the next two years. Essar Communications, a subsidiary of Essar Global, bought a 49% stake in Econet Wireless International (ECI) last December. ECI holds 70% of Econet Wireless Kenya.
* QCELL, a local company in Gambia, was awarded a GSM licence (the fourth).
* Tom Iseghohi was appointed chairman of Nitel.

Over 33% of all new PCs are being downgraded from Vista to XP, according to a report in Computerworld.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* AOL purchased Socialthing, a social media aggregation company.
* NCR acquired UK-based NCI, a provider of teller connectivity software.
* Nortel Networks bought DiamondWare, a company providing 3D audio technology.
* Salesforce.com purchased InStranet, a provider of knowledge management technology for business to consumer call centres, for $31.5 million. The deal is the largest done by Salesforce.com.
* Symantec bought PC Tools, a specialist security company.
* STMicroelectronics and Ericsson have created a fabless joint venture through the merger of ST-NXP Wireless and Ericsson Mobile Platforms. It will create a major player in the wireless semiconductor field.
* Excellent quarterly results from Salesforce.com (profit more than double) and ZTE (China) (African revenue more than double).
* Good quarterly numbers from HP and Open Text.
* Quarterly losses from Blue Coat Systems and QAD.

* The acquisition by Tata Consultancy Services of Citigroup's back-office unit in India, for about $500 million.
* A possible buy-out of Corel, with at least one private equity group interested in the Canadian-based company.
* The successful bidder for a 45% stake in PCCW's new media and telecommunications group. Several private equity groups are on the shortlist of six companies.

* Worldwide IT spending will surpass $3.4 trillion this year, an increase of 8% over 2007, according to Gartner.
* Over 33% of all new PCs are being downgraded from Vista to XP, according to a report in Computerworld.
* EMEA shipments of combined printer, copier and multifunctional devices grew 2.2% in the first half of 2008, with HP dominating this market with nearly a 45% market share, according to Gartner. Surprisingly, Lexmark was not one of the top five vendors that accounted for about 86% of the market.
* Worldwide server shipments grew 12.2% in Q208, with Dell grabbing the number three slot from Sun Microsystems, said Gartner. IBM and HP remain the top two vendors, but IBM has widened the gap between the two.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.5%
* Top SA share movements: Ideco (-20%), Jasco (+9.3%), MICROmega (+25.6%), Mustek (+22%), Poynting Antennas (-12.1%) and Zaptronix (+11.1%)

The results of two surveys have recently been published. Sunday Times has produced its annual 'Top Brands' results that show Vodacom, Nokia and MTN are in the top 10 in the 'overall favourite brand' classification. In addition, Business Report has announced its latest 'Best Employers' listing, which shows Microsoft as number one, with Siemens and Cisco also in the top 10.