ICT mixes it up

The ICT sector's activities over the last two weeks have been somewhat of a mixed bag. Internationally there have been a number of small acquisitions by some of the major players. In Africa, the Safaricom share sale in Kenya dominated, and at home there was distributorship realignment among many of the major players.

* Very good full-year numbers from MICROmega, with revenue up over 50% and profit up over 30%.

* Mixed full-year figures from MTN, with revenue up 42% but profits marginally down.

* Excellent interim numbers from SecureData, with revenue up over 80% and profit well back in the black.

* Very good interim figures from EOH, with revenue up 45% and profit up 25%.

* A full year loss from Ifca Technologies, with revenue also down.

* Positive trading updates from Alliance Mining, ConvergeNet, MICROmega, SAB&T Ubuntu and Square One.

* The Huge Group acquired a 25% stake in Eyeballs Mobile Advertising, the developer of a media platform that delivers rich advertising content to GSM mobile subscriber handsets.

* The merger of Datatec's Logicalis Latin American operation with Promon Tecnologia, a Brazilian network integration business. The move, costing Datatec $77.2 million, will give it a70% holding in the merged entity.

* The merger of Fulcrum Business Solutions and UMT Portfolio Management SA to create a new entity, UMT SA.

* The replacement by Itec Tiyende of its black empowerment partner, the Max and Shaka Sisulu partnership, by iKamva Labantu, a Cape Town-based NPO.

* Gadlex's 5% reduction of its shareholding in Business Connexion, reducing BCX's BEE shareholding to 20.01%.

* Netxactics, the local distributor for Sophos, became Sophos South Africa.

* India's Satyam Computer Services opened a Cape Town office.

* Axiz was appointed as one of the distributors for Samsung monitors and screens; Ingram Micro as a distributor for Microsoft Africa; MicroMega Technologies for the distribution of NetQoS products; Pinnacle Micro as the distributor of RiDATA's optical media and flask memory products; and Rectron as the distributor of Samsung laser printers and a range of Epson products that are SME-focused.

* Hits Africa, a subsidiary of Hits Telecom, won the second national telecommunications operating licence in Equatorial Guinea.

* MTN upped its stake in MTN Rwanda to 55% from 40%.

* The public sale of shares in Safaricom as part of its privatisation and IPO process, the largest deal to date in this region, and a move that has attracted thousands of potential shareholders.

* The commencement of work on the Eassy undersea cable. The East African fibre-optic link, which connects 21 African countries, is expected to go live in June 2009.

In Africa, the Safaricom share sale in Kenya dominated.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The acquisition by Affiliated Computer Services, a Fortune 500 IT company, of Communications Development, a provider of outsourced marketing, consulting and advertising services.

* BMC Software's $800 million acquisition of BladeLogic, a data centre automation company.

* EDS bought UK-based Nexagent, a provider of hardware and software solutions for network service provisioning and advanced IP-based services.

* HP purchased Extreme Holdings, an enterprise software company that streamlines the creation and delivery of documents.

* Lawson Software acquired the lifecycle management software division of Freeborders.

* Oracle bought the e-TEST suite of products from Empirix, a provider of voice and Web application testing and monitoring solutions.

* SAS, the world's largest BI company, purchased Teragram, a leader in natural language processing and advanced linguistic technology.

* Samsung Electronics acquired the IP assets of Clairvoyante, a developer of subpixel display technology.

* Vodafone bought Proton Technologies (Rumania), a mobile phone retailer.

* Deutsche Telekom's EUR2.5 billion (20%) investment in Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation SA.

* Microsoft invested in Aspect Software, a maker of software for routing business telephone calls.

* Microsoft lost its appeal against the anti-trust suit brought by Novell in 2004 re WordPerfect and QuattroPro.

* Motorola will hive-off its cellular phone business into a separately listed entity, probably in 2009.

* The complete breakdown of the proposed 3Com deal with Bain Capital Partners.

* Very good quarterly figures from Adobe.

* Good full year numbers from Accenture, China Mobile (includes revenue breaking the $50 billion barrier and the subscriber base almost reaching 370 million), China Unicom, Hutchison Telecom, Oracle and SAIC.

* Satisfactory quarterly results from China Netcom, Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), Progress Software and Red Hat.

* Mediocre quarterly results from Tibco Software.

* Quarterly losses from 3Com (hasn't made a quarterly profit since the year 2000), Alltel, Intelsat, Jabil Circuit, Palm and Tiscali.

* Profit warnings from Hitachi, Samsung Electronics, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.

* Kuniaki Nozoe was appointed as president of Fujitsu.

* The resignation of Philip Rosedale, CEO and founder of Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. Rosedale stays on as chairman, in a move seen as a precursor to an IPO.

* A takeover of Swedish IT services player, TietoEnator.

* China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International sold a stake to a strategic investor.

* The buy-out of Brasil Telecom by Oi (Brasil), a move that would give the new entity 18% of Brazil's cellphone market, 43% of its broadband Internet services and make it the main fixed-line operator, allowing it to compete with Telefonica and America Movil in the region.

* According to the IMS Research's Online Cellular Database, the global handset market will slow to a growth of 5.7% this year. This is significantly lower than previous years. Handset numbers in 2008 will grow to 1.19 billion.

* PC shipments will grow 10.8% this year to 293 million units, although this number is likely to drop with the current economic conditions, says Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.2%

* Nasdaq: Up 2.2%

* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-26.5%), African Cellular Towers (-9.4%), Altech (+12.5%), Beget Holdings (+50%), Jasco (+14.2%), Metrofile (-20%), Paracon (-14.4%), Sekunjalo (-9.6%), Stella Vista (-26.7%) and TeliMatrix (+26.3%)

IDC has published a management survey undertaken in Australia and New Zealand that highlights CIOs' top 10 technologies or management disciplines for 2008. They are SOA, RFID tags, voice and/or VOIP, IT services quality certification, virtualisation, storage over IP and/or iSCSI, salesforce automation tools and marketing management, ITIL, document management and online exchanges/marketplaces/portals.