MacRobert in spending spree

The highlights of the international ICT market over the last two weeks included the $1 billion-plus buyouts of Lawson Software, Samsung's hard disk drive unit, and Savvis.

At home, Jeffrey Hedberg's appointment at Altech, and the landing of the WACS cable stole much of the local ICT headline space.

The last two weeks also saw the publication of many of the international financial results for Q1 2011.

* Good year-end figures from Datacentrix, with revenue up 22% and profit up 12%.
* Mixed full-year figures from Altech, with revenue up 5% but profit down 62%; and Sekunjalo, with revenue down 10% but profit up 4.6%.
* Good (maiden) interim numbers from PBT, but with the change of year-end there is no direct comparison, although the revenue figure is greater than that of the 14 months ending 31 August 2010.
* Mediocre interim numbers from Vox Telecom, with revenue down 11.4% and profit down 6.3%.
* A full-year loss from IFCA Technologies with revenue also down.
* Positive trading updates from Reunert and Vodacom.
* A negative trading update from Silverbridge.
* A consortium of Power Matla, Epiworx Investment and Empower a Thousand Holdings made a 30% investment in Altech's UEC operation, whose primary business focus is the manufacture and provision of digital set-top boxes.
* Angus MacRobert invested in Aspivia, a developer of a telecommunications billing management system for corporate customers and service providers. He also invested in the businesses of Three6Five that are oriented around networking and network services.
* The West African Cable System landed in SA (Yzerfontein) and is expected to start operations in Q1 2012.
* The successful (second) launch of the New Dawn satellite, an initiative between Intelsat and Convergence Partners that will deliver services specifically tailored for Africa.
* Jeffrey Hedberg (ex-Telkom SA) was appointed COO of Altech.

* Very good year-end numbers from Econet Wireless, with revenue up 36% and profit up 27%.
* Good year-end figures from Mauritius Telecom, which is owned by the government/Central Bank of Mauritius and France Telecom. A listing is planned for the future, although no timeframe has been provided for this.
* Very good quarterly numbers from Nedjma (Algeria) and Tunisiana (Tunisia).
* Very poor quarterly figures from Mobinil (Egypt), with revenue down 4.5% and profit down 93.6%.
* A quarterly loss from Orascom Telecom.
* Garmin has signed a letter of intent to buy its southern African distributor, Garmin Distribution Africa, which will be renamed Garmin Southern Africa.
* Rui Fonseca was named chairman of Vodacom Mozambique; and Abdel Rehim was appointed interim CEO of Telecom Egypt.
* Tarek Tantawy resigned as CEO of Telecom Egypt.

The cloud computing services market will increase from $41 billion in 2011 to $241 billion by 2020.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CenturyLink acquired Savvis, an Internet infrastructure company that has annual revenue approaching $1 billion. The deal was worth $2.5 billion.
* DST Systems purchased the assets of Finix Business Strategies, a financial services consulting firm, and Finix Converge, a technology firm that develops and distributes an enterprise and social networking and media platform that enables companies to connect and collaborate with their constituents more effectively online.
* eBay bought Where, a company that delivers local advertising to mobile phones.
* Golden Gate Capital and Infor acquired Lawson Software for $2 billion.
* Research In Motion bought Tungle, a company that allows users to share their calendars across computers and phones.
* Seagate Technology purchased Samsung Electronics' hard disk drive unit, leaving the latter to focus on its memory chip business. The deal was worth $1.38 billion.
* Silver Lake Partners, a technology-focused private equity company, bought Smart Modular Technologies, a memory chipmaker with a strong presence in Brazil. The acquisition was worth $645 million.
* VMware purchased SlideRocket, a provider of cloud-based business presentation software.
* Yahoo acquired IntoNow, a company that provides technology for connecting audiences with TV content and advertisers.
* China Investment Corporation made a $300 million investment in SMIC, China's largest contract chipmaker.
* Acer is restructuring into two divisions, one running its smartphone and tablet business, and the other its notebook business. The tablet unit was previously part of the notebook division.
* Am'erica Movil's Mexican arm has been fined $1 billion for “monopolistic practices”.
* Nokia is outsourcing its Symbian software development to Accenture.
* Excellent quarterly results from Apple, ASM International, Baidu, HTC and Riverbed Technology.
* Very good full-year numbers from ARM Holdings, F5 Networks, Huawei Technologies, Netgear and Qualcomm.
* Very good quarterly figures from Altera, Intel, Lam Research, Polycom and VMware.
* Good quarterly numbers from Akamai Technologies, Amphenol, Arrow Electronics, Citrix Systems, eBay, EMC, Ericsson, Flextronics, Informatica, Millicom Cellular International, Open Text, Software AG, STMicroelectronics, UMC (Taiwan), Websense, Wipro, Xerox (back in the black) and ZTE.
* Good year-end figures from CGI Group, Kyocera, Microsoft, NetSuite and Sharp.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from AMD, Amdocs, AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, Corning, IBM, Infineon, KDDI (Japan), Motorola Solutions, NCR (back in the black), Rogers Communications, Sanmina-SCA, SAP, Texas Instruments, Verizon Communications and Xilinx.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Hon Hai Precision Industry, Taiwan's largest technology company (revenue exceeded $100 billion for the first time).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Canon, Compal Electronics, Diebold, Hynix Semiconductor, Iron Mountain, Lexmark, Seagate Technology, Sony Ericsson, TeliaSonera, Western Digital and Yahoo.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Fujitsu and NTT DoCoMo.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Amazon.com, with revenue up but profit down; Broadcom, with revenue down but profit up; China Unicom, with revenue up but profit down; DST Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Etisalat, with revenue up but profit down; Fiserv, with revenue up but profit down; Forrester Research, with revenue up but profit down; Ingram Micro, with revenue up but profit down; Juniper Networks, with revenue up but profit down; LG Electronics, with revenue up but profit down; Logitech, with revenue up but profit down; Nokia, with revenue up but profit down; Pitney Bowes, with revenue down but profit up; Samsung Electronics, with revenue up but profit down; SanDisk, with revenue up but profit down; Saudi Telecom, with revenue up but profit down; TomTom, with revenue down but profit up; and Verizon Communications, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Acer and Ariba.
* Very poor year-end numbers from Mitac International.
* Quarterly losses from AU Optronics, Eastman Kodak, Freescale Semiconductor, Imation, LG Display, Motorola Mobility, Panasonic, Sprint Nextel, ST-Ericsson, Tellabs and Unisys.
* The appointments of Ossama Bessada as CEO of Wind Telecommunicazioni (following VimpelCom's acquisition of the company); Ari Karppinen as acting CEO of Tieto (Finland), an IT services company; and Jim Wong as president of Acer.
* The resignations of Luigi Gubitosi, CEO of Wind Telecommunicazioni, and Hannu Syrjala, CEO of Tieto.
* The death of Norio Ohga, an ex-president of Sony and the person who pioneered the first CD.
* An IPO filing in the US from Renren, China's largest social networking site.

* International:
* A buyer for Micro Focus, probably Bain Capital for a figure of around £890 million.
* Dell buying some European-based assets.
* South Africa:
* A possible BEE deal for Datacentrix.

* IT spending in the South African government sector in 2010 totalled $1.47 billion, largely driven by e-government initiatives, according to IDC.
* The portable PC market in MEA for Q1 grew 13.4%, while the desktop segment shrunk by 3.5%, according to IDC.
* Semiconductor revenue rose by more than $70 billion in 2010 to reach almost $300 billion, reports Gartner.
* The cloud computing services market will increase from $41 billion in 2011 to $241 billion by 2020, according to Forrester Research.
* Apple overtook Nokia in Q1 to become the largest vendor of mobile handsets by revenue, according to Strategy Analytics.
* The operating systems software market grew 7.8% in 2010 to $30.4 billion, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide PC market (notebooks, desktops, netbooks and pads) grew 7% in Q1 to 88.6 million shipments, according to Canalys.
* The worldwide mobile phone market grew nearly 20% in Q1 to 371.8 million units, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 3.9%
* Top SA share movements: Altech (+11.5%), Ansys (+11.4%), Datacentrix (-11.7%), Dialogue Group (-33.3%), FoneWorx (+10.5%), Ideco (-14.3%), MICROmega (-18.7%) and MTN (+8.7%)

IDC has updated its ICT Sustainability Index that ranks the ability of the G20 nations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions through the use of ICT.

Japan remains in the number one position, with an index score of 17, well ahead of France, Germany and the US each with scores of 21. Other scores include the UK with 22; Australia with 33; China with 35; India with 38; and South Africa with 40.

Also, the Financial Mail has just published its 2011 'Top Empowerment Companies' book that showed AdaptIT as the top company in the ICT sector, and Altron as number two in the general industrial sector. Overall, Sekunjalo Investments came in at number two; Altron at 25; AdaptIT at 27; Gijima at 31; Paracon at 33; Jasco at 35; and MTN at 40.