Mobile Messenger scores

The international and local markets were quiet last week. Internationally, there were a handful of small acquisitions/mergers and the announcements of some quarterly numbers, including those from Dell.

At home, a number of financial results were published, and Square One's share price dropped by almost 90% during the week.

* Good interim numbers from Amecor, with revenue up 22% and profit up 17%.
* Mediocre interim figures from Mix Telematics, with revenue slightly down, but profit down 35%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Spescom, with revenue flat, but profit up.
* Mixed year-end figures from ConvergeNet Holdings, with revenue up, but profit down; Dimension Data, with revenue down, but profit up (just); Paracon, with revenue up 2%, but profit down 20%; and Reunert, with revenue down, but profit up.
* An interim loss from TCS, with revenue also down.
* A positive trading update from Naspers.
* A negative trading update from Sekunjalo Investments.
* Media24 acquired DTH's subsidiary, Offline Digital, a specialist software development company, for R3.3 million.
* Alliance Mining's CEO, Alwyn Steenkamp, has been granted a leave of absence due to ill health.
* Kaspersky Lab has opened an office in SA that will serve sub-Saharan Africa.
* The appointments of Khalid Abdulla as CEO of Sekunjalo Investments, and Carel Neethling as acting CEO of Alliance Mining.

* Good quarterly figures from Orascom Telecom (Egypt), with profit nearly double.
* Convergence Partners, a South African investment house led by Andile Ngcaba, invested in WIA (Tanzania), which supplies wireless voice and data services to corporate clients.
* Millicom International Cellular unveiled the third mobile operation in Rwanda.

Look out for the EUR1.5 billion takeover of Oc'e, the Dutch printing group, by Canon.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Mobile Messenger bought VeriSign's m-Qube unit for $20 million, a fraction of the price it originally paid for that business ($250 million).
* Motorola acquired BitBand, a provider of content management and delivery systems and one specialising in video on-demand for IPTV; and the iDEN Business of RadioFrame Networks.
* Innolux Display (Taiwan) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (Taiwan) merged in a deal worth $5.3 billion, to become Taiwan's largest maker of LCD panels, and one of the top three worldwide (LG Electronics and Samsung being the other two). The new company is to be called Chi Mei Innolux.

* Good quarterly numbers from salesforce.com.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Dell and Experian (Ireland).
* Mixed quarterly figures from Infineon, with revenue down, but profit up; NetApp, with revenue down, but profit up; and Zain, with revenue up, but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from ADC, Aruba Networks, Intuit and Nortel Networks.
* Grameenphone made a great debut on the Bangladesh exchange, following its heavily oversubscribed IPO.
* Fortinet, a provider of unified threat management applications, made a good debut on Nasdaq.

* International:
* The EUR1.5 billion takeover of Oc'e, the Dutch printing group, by Canon.
* The acquisition by Asustek Computer of another PC notebook vendor such as Toshiba.
* The possible acquisition by Foxconn Electronics, Taiwan's largest technology company, of one of the LED chipmakers in Taiwan, such as Epistar, Formosa Epitaxy or Unity Opto.
* The $1.3 billion acquisition by Telenor (Norway) of Warid Telecom (Pakistan).
* South Africa:
* The complete buy-out of Mondial, an organisation specialising in SAP software products, by Paracon, which already owns 22% of the company.

* Worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2010 will rebound to 2008 levels, at $255 billion, despite expectations this year of revenue of $226 billion, according to Gartner.
* The context-aware computing market is expected to grow to $12 billion by 2012, says Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.9% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Down 1%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+16.7%), African Cellular Towers (-11.8%), Beget Holdings (-25%), Dialogue Group (+12.5%), Ifca Technologies (-40%), Mix Telematics (+21.5%), Spescom (+20.8%), Square One (-89.5%), TCS (-22.8%) and TeleMasters (+15.2%)

I am away in Germany this week on business; therefore my next column will appear on 7 December and will cover a two-week period. This column will also be the last of the year, as my 'Review of 2009' will appear on 14 December.