DataPro acquires Orion

The international ICT market was comparatively quiet over the past two weeks apart from a couple of acquisitions by Motorola.

The South African ICT market was dominated by a flurry of local results and DataPro's buy-out of Orion Telecom.

* Excellent full-year numbers from Trematon, with profit up from under R3 million to over R20 million (there are no revenue figures).
* Good full-year results from Paracon, with revenue up nearly 20% and profit up over 30%.
* Very poor full-year numbers from Dimension Data, with revenue up nearly 16% and attributable profit up over 100%; however, the latter figure is still less than 1% of turnover.
* Excellent interim numbers from Alliance Data, with revenue and profit up over 300%.
* Very good interim figures from Vodacom with revenue up over 20% and profit up over 30%.
* Satisfactory interim figures from Telkom SA, with revenue up 7.3% and profit up 4.9%.
* Mediocre interim figures from Eureka Industrial, with revenue up over 10%, but attributable profit down over 25%.
* A good set of Q1 numbers from Net-1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue and income both up over 10%.
* Positive trading updates from Sekunjalo and UCS.
* A mixed trading update from Spescom.
* A negative trading update from Trematon.
* The suspension of Idion shares following its buy-out by a US private equity group.
* DataPro bought Orion Telecom in a deal valued at R380 million.
* DiData acquired Unreal Technology AS, a Czech Republic network infrastructure services company.
* Mthombo IT, a subsidiary of EOH, purchased Dicoll Electronics, a storage support company.
* Cornastone Enterprise Systems acquired a 51% stake in SYSDBA, an IT infrastructure optimisation specialist.
* Safika Investments acquired a 35% stake in Molapo Technology, a telecommunications equipment repair company.
* KSS increased its BEE holding to 41% with the inclusion of two new stakeholders: Lazarus Mtshali and Ntsundeni Madzunya.
* Vodacom is likely to take a 10% stake in iBurst.
* The appointments of Brian Gouldie as acting MD of MTN SA, Kiruben Pillay as acting CEO of arivia.kom, and Ntsundeni Madzunya as chairman of KSS.
* The resignation of Maanda Manyatshe, MD of MTN SA.
* MTN increased its BEE stake.
* A planned listing on AltX by Celcom, a black empowered telecommunications group, whose initial offer was seven times oversubscribed.
* ADIC Africa re-branded as Quantum Africa following the acquisition of ADIC by Quantum.
* TSS Holdings established Maconomy SA, a company that will focus on the Maconomy range of tools.
* Nebula concluded a BEE deal that will eventually see its employees owning 50% of the company.
* IncuBeta Intelligent Marketing, a supplier of services to Amazon.com, eBay, Google and Yahoo, won the Minister's Award for overall winner in the SME category of the 2006 Technology Top 100 Awards.
* Government announced that the mobile operators are now able, internationally, to self-provide.

* Gateway raised $100 million for its expansion into Africa.
* Vodafone to increase its investment in Vodafone Egypt to 55%.
* Nigeria is set to overtake SA by the end of 2007 as the largest mobile market, according to WCIS.
* GijimaAst Namibia and the Information Technology Department have merged, with the former holding 70% of the merged entity.

According to Gartner, cellular PDAs surged by over 30% in Q306, compared to Q305, hitting the 4.5 million mark.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Cisco bought Greenfield Networks, a metro Ethernet chipmaker.
* Motorola snapped up Good Technology, a mobile software maker that competes with Research in Motion (BlackBerry), and Netopia, a maker of broadband equipment and software.
* Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB to buy-out the other shareholders in Symbian.
* Telefonica and some charitable foundations to buy most of the 23% stake in PCCW held by Richard Li, the latter's chairman.
* The planned name change of Glenayre Technologies.
* Job loss announcements from Gateway, Intermec, Merge and Open Text.
*Planned IPOs from CDC Software, the ERP arm of CDC; Oger Telecom, a Middle East telecommunications company that also owns Turk Telecom; and Salary.com, an on-demand compensation management service provider.

* The sell-off by Vodacom of its 25% stake in Swisscom Mobile AG.
* The acquisition of TIM Brasil, Telecom Italia Brazil's operation.
* The potential acquisition of Australia's Commander Communications by Singapore Telecom.

According to Gartner, cellular PDAs surged by over 30% in Q306, compared to Q305, hitting the 4.5 million mark. Research in Motion had the largest market share with 20.9%.

Demand for chips will grow by 9% annually for the next three years, says the Semiconductor Industry Association.

* JSE All Share Index: Down 1.7% (but an all-time high was achieved during the last two weeks).
* Nasdaq: Up 4.9% (highest weekend close for over five years).
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Data (+39.4%), Altron (+10%), Beget Holdings (+25%), Cape Empowerment Trust (+13.8%), Eureka (+12.5%), I-Solutions (+18.5%), Labat Africa (-18.2%), Stella Vista (-13.3%), Synergy (-27.3%) and Trematon (+27.4%).
* Top international share movements: Amkor Technology (+43.7%), Daktronics (+44%), ESS Technology (+29.3%), Exabyte (+325%), Internet America (+42.9%), Level 8 Systems (+60%), Rambus (+28.7%), Silverline Technologies (+30.8%), SRS Labs (+44.9%) and VerticalNet (+38.5%).

Fortune magazine recently published its 2006 Accountability Ratings. Top of the pile was Vodafone, with HP and IBM being the only other ICT companies in the top 25.