Holiday shoppers spend, spend, spend

As seems to be the norm over the year-end holiday season, the international ICT market has been dominated by numerous acquisitions from many of the major players, including Apple, Cisco, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola and Oracle.

At home, the rumours surrounding possible management changes at Sentech, and more rumours about a potential 60% acquisition of Zimbabwe's TelOne by Telkom SA, continue to mount.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from TeleMasters, with revenue up nearly 30%, although profit only up 3%.
* A full year loss from Ideco, with revenue also down.
* Positive trading updates from Datatec, Dimension Data and Faritec, although a loss by the latter is still expected.
* A negative trading update from Simeka.
* Datatec acquired Netstar, an Asia-Pacific Cisco-focused network integrator, for $19.8 million.
* Inca purchased iCentric, a BI company, facilitating its entry into the South African market.
* Jasco Electronics purchased LeBlanc CIH Lighting Structures, a company involved in the design, manufacture and installation of lighting, broadcasting and telecommunications steel structures in sub-Saharan Africa. The deal was worth R7 million (51%).
* Lifeworld Group, a subsidiary of UCS, acquired the Radical Business Unit of Dynamic Visual Technologies for R1.94 million.
* Silverbridge purchased Graystone Technology Investments' Acczone Academy business and the Acczone Software business.
* The proposed merger of Cape Empowerment Trust and Dynamic Cables in a move that will see the end of the latter's development capital listing on the JSE.
* Thebe Investment Corporation made a R350 million investment (25% plus one share) in Altech's Netstar division.
* Infraco has been awarded an I-ECNS licence.
* Sentech will land the new West Coast submarine cable that is owned by a consortium led by France Telecom/Orange.
* World Wide Worx says the number of South African Internet users has passed the five million mark, and for the first time, broken through the 10% Internet penetration mark.
* The appointments of Lebusho Moahlodi as chairman of USAASA; Jane Silber as CEO of Canonical; Lindikhaya Sipoyo as executive chairman of TCS; and Frank van Rees as SA country manager for HP.
* The resignations of Ali Bacher, chairman of Stella Vista; Shaheed Mohamed as CEO of TCS; and Mark Shuttleworth as CEO of Canonical.

* Econet Wireless Group acquired PME African Infrastructure Opportunities' shareholding in the former's Burundi mobile company, giving it overall control.
* Zinox Telecoms (Nigeria) purchased the Enugu Coal-City WiFi project.
* The resignation of Zul Javaid, CEO of WARID Telecom (Uganda).

The global technology industry will see an 8.1% increase in spending this year to $1.6 trillion, according to Forrester Research.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The Altice Group purchased Motorola's Integrated Radio System subsidiary, MIRS.
* Apple acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company, for $300 million.
* Bharti Airtel bought Warid Telecom (Bangladesh) for $900 million (70%).
* BMC Software acquired Phurnace Software, an automation software developer.
* CA purchased Oblicore, a provider of service level management software.
* Cisco acquired Rohati Systems, a data centre security start-up.

* EMC bought Archer Technologies, a governance, risk and compliance software maker.
* Ericsson purchased Pride, an Italian consultancy company.
* Gartner acquired Burton Group, a research and advisory services company that focuses on providing practical, technical in-depth advice to front-line IT professionals. The deal was worth $56 million.
* Genband purchased Nortel's VOIP and applications solutions business for $282 million.
* Hitachi bought the software assets related to Next-Generation Mobile Communications Systems of Nortel Networks for $10 million.
* IBM purchased Lombardi Software, a business software maker.
* Lawson Software acquired Healthvision Solutions, a provider of technology to hospitals and large healthcare organisations.
* Microsoft purchased Opalis Software, a maker of data centre management software, and Sentillion, a healthcare software company.
* Motorola bought SecureM, a digital rights management firm.
* NCR acquired DVDPlay, a DVD Kiosk operator.
* NTT's DoCoMo bought Germany's net mobile AG, a mobile content distribution platform provider, for $59 million (80%).
* ON Semiconductor bought California Micro Devices, for $108 million. The move continues the multiple consolidations happening within the semiconductor market.
* Oracle acquired Silver Creek, a provider of software for sharing product data across supply chains.
* Panasonic purchased Sanyo Electric for $4.6 billion.
* Progress Software bought Savvion, a BPM technology company, for $49 million.
* Symantec acquired Gideon Technologies, a provider of standards-based information security products.
* Telefonica's O2 mobile phone unit purchased Jajah, an Internet phone company, for $200 million.
* Tibco bought Foresight, a software company that validates transactions and processes claims.
* Twitter purchased Mixer Labs, a start-up that helps map tweeting locations.
* NTT Communications made a 30% investment in goFLUENT Group, a language training company.
* Gemalto made an additional investment in Netsize, a mobile payment solutions company.
* AsiaInfo (China) and Linkage (China) merged to form a software solutions provider worth $1.8 billion.
* Asustek will spin-off its motherboard arm, Pegatron Technology.
* The EU has dropped its longstanding anti-trust charges against Microsoft, after the latter agreed to give users a choice of up to 12 Web browsers.
* Microsoft lost its appeal against a $290 million patent infringement case regarding its Word 2007 product.
* Nokia will form a joint venture with New Alliance (China) to offer mobile services in China.
* Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, has launched a $21.3 billion bid to consolidate his telecommunications empire that is mainly in Latin America and includes America Movil.
* The US government has joined the legal attacks on Intel regarding its alleged anti-trust activities.
* A planned IPO from SingTel (Singapore) for 25% its Optus (Australia) unit.
* A disappointing debut by AOL on the NYSE.

Look out for:

* International:
* The possible acquisition of Ciena by Nokia, the former having recently acquired Nortel's optical equipment business.
* Vodafone disposing of its small (<5%) stake in Bharti Airtel.
* The privatisation of Hutchison Telecommunications International by Hutchison Whampoa.
* The possible acquisition by Google of Yelp, a business review site.
* The possible acquisition by Vodafone of Borusan Telekom (Turkey).

* Africa:
* France Telecom taking full control of ECMS (Egypt) following the approval from Egypt's financial services regulator for the deal.
* The outcome of the dispute between Vodacom and its DRC partner.
* The possible acquisition by MTN of Zimbabwe's Net*One.
* The outcome of the bids for Zamtel (Zambia) from BSNL (India), Unitel (Angola), LAP Greencom (Libya) and Altimo (Russia).

* South Africa:
* A possible 60% acquisition by Telkom SA of TelOne (Zimbabwe).
* Possible management changes at Sentech, including the CEO, Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane.

* The mobile security market will exceed $4 billion by 2014, according to ABI Research.
* Global shipments of e-book readers will hit 9.3 million units in 2010 from 3.82 million in 2009, according to Digitimes research.
* Notebook revenue was expected to decline 7% in 2009 to $109 billion, according to DisplaySearch.
* The global technology industry will see an 8.1% increase in spending this year to $1.6 trillion, according to Forrester Research.
* South African IT end-user spending in 2009 was expected to reach $24.6 billion, a 2% decline from 2008. However, it forecast a 6% growth in 2010, reports Gartner.
* Worldwide mobile device sales would have marginally declined in 2009 to 1 214 billion units, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide PC shipments in Q409 were up 22.1% over 2008, with the top five now being HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba, reports Gartner.
* The worldwide software storage market declined 7.9% in Q309 to revenue of $2.87 billion, reports IDC.
* Global mobile revenue will exceed $1 trillion in 2013, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

* JSE All share index: Up 2%
* Nasdaq: Up 4.3%
* Top SA share movements: Cape Empowerment Trust (+20%), Faritec (+25%), GijimaAst (+19.1%), Ideco (+37.5%), Ifca Technologies (+20%), Labat Africa (+40%), Paracon (+23.6%), Poynting Antennas (-48.7%), TCS (-33.3%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

In Nasdaq's annual re-ranking of the Nasdaq-100 index, and from a technology perspective, BMC Software, SanDisk and Vodafone Group have been included as three of the seven new entrants, while Akamai Technologies is among those being removed.