Google fills its trolley

The international ICT market was quiet over the last two weeks, with a handful of acquisitions making the main news. Two of them involved private equity groups and indicates, at long last, movement from these players again in the ICT arena.

Locally, the key news of the last two weeks was the annual results from MTN, and the resignation of its group CEO.

Look out for a possible buyout of Twitter by Microsoft.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Good interim numbers from Metrofile, with revenue up 10% and profit up 46%.
* Satisfactory interim figures from Rectron, with revenue up 8% and profit up 27%.
* Mixed interim figures from Compu-Clearing, with revenue up 6% but profit down 9%.
* Mediocre interim numbers from Digicore, with revenue down 13% and profit down 59%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from MTN, with revenue up 9% and profit up marginally.
* A negative trading update from Datatec.
* Imperial Holdings made a 25.4% investment in MiX Telematics.
* Andy Baker was appointed MD of Kemtek Imaging Systems; and Hennie du Plessis was named CEO of Bytes Document Solutions. Du Plessis replaces Rob Abraham, who takes over as CEO of Bytes Technology Group from David Redshaw, who has retired.
* Andy Baker, COO of Altech, resigned; and Phuthuma Nhleko, CEO of MTN, resigned as from 30 June.

* Good year-end numbers from Onatel (Burkina Faso), with revenue up 15.3% and profit up 54.8%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Gabon Telecom, with revenue up and back in the black; Maroc Telecom, with both revenue and profit very slightly up; and Sotelma (Mali), with revenue up 3.7% and profit up nearly threefold.
* Mixed year-end figures from Mauritel (Mauritania), with revenue slightly up but profit slightly down.
* Nigeria's acting president said the head of the body handling the Nitel privatisation deal has been suspended.
* Vodafone has signed a non-equity company-operation deal with Libya's Al-Madar, the second largest mobile operator in that country.

* Abry Partners, a private equity firm, acquired RCN, a broadband provider, for $553 million.
* CA bought Nimsoft, a managed services provider that focuses on cloud computing, for $350 million.
* CCMP, a private equity firm, purchased infoGROUP (ex-Info USA), a consumer database company, for approximately $450 million. This is the latest deal in a spate of smaller leveraged buyouts of publicly traded companies.
* Elpida Memory (Japan) acquired the flash memory assets of US-based Spansion in a move seen as one that would allow Elpida to compete with its South Korean rivals such as Samsung.
* Google bought DocVerse, a technology start-up that allows people to edit Microsoft Office files online.
* Google acquired Picnik, an online photo editing business.
* Sony bought Media Molecule, a games developer.
* Belgium-based IT services company Vision IT Group purchased GFI Informatik and its subsidiaries in Germany, for EUR5.2 million. GFI Informatik was part of the French IT services group, GFI Informatique.
* China Mobile made a $5.83 billion (20%) investment in Pudong Development Bank, in a move designed to expand its mobile payment services.
* T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom, invested in Lantiq, the second largest fabless semiconductor vendor in Europe.
* Very good quarterly figures from National Semiconductor.
* Good quarterly numbers from Inmarsat.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Telefonica.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Gemalto.
* Mediocre annual figures from BSNL (India).
* Mixed year-end figures from Nortel Networks, with revenue well down but back in the black; Ordina, a Dutch IT services group, with revenue down but back in the black; Qatar Telecom, with revenue up but profit down; QAD, with revenue down but profit up; and SFR (France), part of the Vivendi Group.
* Mixed quarterly numbers from T-Systems, with revenue down but EBITDA up.
* Quarterly losses from Ciena and Vivendi.
* An IPO filing from KKR, one of the world's leading private equity groups with many ICT interests, including First Data, NXP and TDC, the Danish telecommunications company.

* International:
* A possible $1.8 billion acquisition of Novell by Elliott Associates, a hedge fund.
* A possible acquisition of Fujitsu's notebook business by Acer. This is seen as a move that would contribute to Acer catching HP regarding PC sales.
* A possible buyout of Twitter by Microsoft.
* Africa:
* The possible take-over by Telkom SA of the management of Beryl Telecoms, Malawi's third mobile operator.
* The opening of an office in Zimbabwe by Integr8 IT.
* A re-look at the Nitel deal.
* South Africa:
* Further developments on the Faritec funding issues.

* Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenue only shrunk 0.7% in Q409 to $5.3 billion, according to IDC.
* Sales of touch-screen mobile devices will grow 97% this year to reach 362.7 million units, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide storage software market grew 0.5% in Q409 to $3.09 billion, with the top six players all retaining their previous rankings, reports IDC.
* The worldwide external controller-based disk storage market declined 8.6% in 2009 to $16.3 billion, with the top six vendors all maintaining their positions, reports Gartner.
* Worldwide PV shipments will grow 20% this year to 366.1 million units, predicts Gartner.
* Acer almost overtook Dell last year as the second largest PC supplier, according to iSuppli. Acer took 12.7% of market shipments compared to Dell's 12.9%.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.8% (highest weekend close since August 2008)
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+23.1%), Ansys (-14.3%), ConvergeNet (-11.8%), DTH (+14.8%), Dynamic Cables (-35.7%), Faritec (+33.3%), Sekunjalo (+13%), Silverbridge (+13.3%), TeleMasters (+11.4%) and Zaptronix (-20%)

The latest edition of Fast Company includes the listing of The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies. Unsurprisingly, there are many technology companies in the list, including Facebook at number one; Amazon, Apple and Google as joint number twos; Huawei Technologies at five; Intel at 14; Cisco at 17; IBM at 18; HTC at 31; Samsung at 36; Microsoft at 48 and Twitter at 50.