Charter, SNO still top of the pops

Local news surrounding the ICT black empowerment charter and the second national operator (SNO) was prominent last week, with international activities taking a breather comparatively, following the hectic activity of the past two to three months.

* The threat of legal action by Nexus re the SNO has been lifted, allowing the six different entities to potentially formulate a business plan and draw up a shareholders` agreement, in order that a licence be granted and its operations commence.

* The final version of the ICT black empowerment charter is likely to be released in March, allowing two months for public comment before being gazetted in June.

* Renewed efforts by Quest Comms to stall the acquisition of MCI by Verizon Comms.

* Good interim numbers from Pinnacle Technology. Revenue up about 10% but profit more than doubled.

* Positive trading updates from Cape Empowerment Trust and Y3K.

* An offer by Saab for the shares of Grintek that it does not already own, except for those held by Kunene Brothers. The bid, if successful, would lead to the de-listing of Grintek.

* The creation of Gestetner Tshwane, a reseller of Gestetner SA in which Chaka Chaka Investments owns 74.9% and Gestetner SA the remaining 25.1%.

* The appointments of Yvonne Chaka Chaka as CEO of Gestetner Tshwane and Peter Trickey as CEO of Realyst.

* Annex Distribution was appointed as the local distribution partner for LG Electronics.

* Acer is number two among SA`s leading PC vendors with a 17.4% market share in the notebook sector,

according to IDC.

* Altron launched its own company charter, Altron Transformation Vision 2010.

* The chairman of the Nigerian Software Development Initiative says the software industry in Nigeria is estimated at over N15 billion (about R650 million).

* SecureData was appointed as southern African distributor for Rocket Software.

* Esquire Technologies was appointed as distributor for Elitegroup Computer Systems` ranges of motherboards and notebooks in southern Africa.

* Patricia McCracken of Caxton Publishers won the Telkom ICT Journalist of the Year Award for 2004.

Dell has finally made it to the top of Fortune magazine`s annual list of America`s Most Admired Companies.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Sony withdrew from the PDA market.

* The creation of a joint venture by LG Philips LCD and Nippon Electric Glass.

* NEC-Mitsubishi Electric Visual Systems, a manufacturer of displays, will become a subsidiary of NEC on 31 March.

* The appointments of John Berndt as chairman of Telular, Douglas Garn as president of Quest Software, Debbie Miller as CEO of Ascendant Systems, and Atsutoshi Nishida as president and CEO of Toshiba.

* The resignation of Kenneth Millard as chairman, president and CEO of Telular.

* The death of Lawrence Kavanau, founder of SYS Technologies.

* Analyst upgrades for Arris, Arrow Electronics, Ask Jeeves, Belden CDT, Ciena, Cogent, EDS, IDX Systems, Infineon Technologies, Jabil Circuit, Oracle, ProQuest and Spirent.

* Analyst downgrades for 3M, Agile Software, Anteon, Autodesk, Avaya, Cablevision Systems, Chartered Semiconductor, Google, GSI Lumonics, Hitachi, JDS Uniphase, McAfee, Network Appliance, SigmaTel, SpectraLink, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Yahoo.

* A positive results announcement from Maxwell Technologies.

* A negative result warning from CompuDyne.

* Stock repurchase announcements from Advent Software, AutoData Networks, Broadcom, Ikonics, Matav-Cable Systems Media and Matsushita Electric.

* Job loss announcements from 3Com, Pericom Semiconductor, TDC and Telekom Malaysia.

* A stock offering announcement from American Superconductor.

* Share splits from Activision (4:3), Harris (2:1) and WebSky (reverse 300:1).

* Planned IPOs on London`s AIM from Irish IT services and telecoms provider, Calyx Group, and Israel`s Leadcom, a company specialising in telecoms services.

* A good IPO on London`s AIM by Adamind, a market leader in media adaptation software.

* Systemax re-stated its financials for most of 2004 and 2003, and SBA Comms re-stated its 2002-2004 results.

* The acquisition by Deutsche Telekom of Red Electrica de Espana SA`s Albura telecoms arm.

* Possible changes in MCI`s fate following revised bids from Qwest Comms.

* Digital camera shipments will increase to over 100 million units in 2008, according to Lyra Research. Over 63 million were shipped in 2004.

* Gartner says over 6.7 million servers were shipped in 2004, up 20.5% from 2003. The value was estimated to be $49.5 billion, a 7.2% increase over 2003.

* Worldwide WiFi equipment revenues hit $2.8 billion in 2004, up 15% from 2003, according to Infonetics` research. Unit volumes hit 36.1 million and are predicted to reach 80.4 million units by 2008.

* The Software Equity Group says the software industry accounted for 16% of the total North American M&A activity in 2004, the highest for any industry segment.

* A recent IDC study shows that worldwide revenue for anti-spam solutions will exceed $1.7 billion in 2008. 2003 generated only $300 million.

* An IDC study predicts core and predictive analytics revenue will grow from $8 billion in 2003 to more than $11 billion in 2008.

* The worldwide server market in 2004 grew 6.2% to $49 billion from a revenue perspective, while shipments grew 19.3% to 6.3 million units, according to the latest information from IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.5%

* Nasdaq: Up 0.3%

* Top SA share movements: Faritec (-8.6%), I-Solutions (+20%), Labat Africa (-16%), Metrofile (+71.4%), Pinnacle (-12.4%), Stella Vista (+25%), Trematon (+8%), Y3K (+22.5%) and Zaptronix (+40%).

* Top international share movements: Business Serve (+31.9), Earthport (+28%), Elcom International (+37.5%), Empire Interactive (+26.4%), Enherent (+30.4%), eTechnology VCT Plc (+30.8%), Mitek (+81.6%), Network Computing Devices (-28.6%), Plasmon (-25%) and Rainmaker (+32.7%).

Dell has finally made it to the top of Fortune magazine`s annual list of America`s Most Admired Companies, with the only other technology company in the top 10 being Microsoft at eight.