HP under investigation in Russia

International ICT news was dominated by allegations against HP regarding bribery in Russia. At home, home affairs' spat with GijimaAst stole much of the local ICT space.

* Very good 12-month numbers from AdaptIT. Year-end has now been moved to end June and full-year figures will reflect a 16-month period.
* A full year loss from Ifca Technologies, with revenue also significantly down; and Square One Solutions, with revenue down 63%.
* Angus MacRobert, ex-CEO of Internet Solutions, has invested in three6five, a start-up telecommunications company.
* GijimaAst entered into a legal dispute with the Department of Home Affairs, after the department cancelled the company's Who Am I contract.
* ICASA has only issued Infraco with an ECNS licence and not the ECS licence the latter was expecting.
* Alan Farthing was appointed CEO of Dialogue Group.

* France Telecom and Orascom have signed a truce regarding the battle for Mobinil, Egypt's largest mobile operator.
* January Zadak was appointed senior VP and MD for HP EMEA.

* Gemalto acquired Todos, a provider of authentication solutions.
* Google bought Plink, a UK-based visual search engine start-up.
* Oracle purchased Phase Forward, a provider of software that helps manage clinical trials, for $685 million.
* Twitter acquired Atebits, a corporate client for iPhone and Mac platforms.
* VMware's SpringSource purchased Rabbit Technologies, a provider of cloud messaging technology.
* Tencent (China) made a $300 million investment in Digital Sky Technologies (DST) Russia, an Internet powerhouse. DST has a major investment in Facebook. Tencent's major shareholder is Naspers.
* HP is being investigated regarding possible bribery activities in Russia.
* Very good quarterly figures from AMD (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Google.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Infosys Technologies.
* Mediocre year-end results from Foxconn (Taiwan).
* Mixed quarterly figures from Sony Ericsson, although back in the black.
* Quarterly losses from Inotera Memories and Nanya Technologies.
* IPO filings from NeoPhotonics, a maker of components for optical telecommunications networks; and Alpha & Omega Semiconductor - its speciality is a 'power' chip that is used in many devices.
* A possible IPO by Demand Media, a start-up that mines online search engine data to generate thousands of videos and Web stories a day.

Worldwide IT spending is expected to grow 5.3% in 2010.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* International:
* Palm is now actively seeking a buyer.
* Africa:
* Further developments regarding Bharti's activities in Africa.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Faritec and Square One Solutions.

* Worldwide IT spending is expected to grow 5.3% in 2010 to $3.4 trillion, according to Gartner.
* Q1 worldwide PC shipments rose 24.2% to 79.1 million, with Acer retaining its number two slot behind HP, reports IDC. In a similar Gartner report, Asus was at number five, just ahead of Toshiba.
* EMEA server revenue is expected to grow 2.4% this year, following a 26.4% decline in 2009, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.1% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: ConvergeNet (-15.2%), Dynamic Cables (+35.3%) GijimaAst (-15%), Labat Africa (-10%), MiX Telematics (+16.5%), Mustek (+9.3%), Simeka (+11.8%), Stella Vista (-58.3%) and Vox Telecom (+9.4%)

The Wall Street Journal recently published its listing of the 'Top 50 venture-backed companies'. From a technology perspective, it seems the ones to watch are Fusion-io, a provider of flask memory drives that allow servers to handle as much as 10 times the data of traditional storage systems; Azui Systems, a producer of specialised network appliances that organisations can use to boost the performance of applications written in Java; and Xirrus, a provider of large-scale indoor WiFi networks. All three companies were in the top 10 of the listing.