Motorola names its offspring

The international ICT market was fairly quiet again last week, with a handful of small acquisitions and/or investments. Motorola announced the names for the new companies that will be created by its proposed split early next year. The local ICT scene was also very quiet, with the results from Naspers being one of the 'highlights'.

* Mixed full-year numbers from Naspers, with revenue up 5%, but profit down 39%. Its Internet unit revenue and Ebitda were up 24% and 42% respectively; although its technology unit revenue and Ebitda were down 20%, but back in the black.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Amecor, with revenue marginally down and profit down almost 10%.
* A full-year loss from TCS, with revenue also down 28%.
* A positive trading update from Metrofile.
* The acquisition by EOH of the BEA Systems unit of African Legend Indigo.
* The 50% acquisition by Alan Knott-Craig Jr of Arc Telecommunications, a company led by former iBurst commercial head Steve Briggs; and whose staff consists of many of the individuals who were at iBurst Business.
* Goal Technology Solutions (GTS) has been placed into liquidation. Safika Holdings, a BEE investment company, is the major shareholder in GTS.
* GijimaAST has proposed a name change to Gijima Group.
* Stephen Mncube was appointed chairman of ICASA; Nontobeko Ntsinde was named acting CEO of SITA; and Nick Wentzel was appointed CEO of Reunert.
* Gerrit Pretorius retired as CEO of Reunert.

* Paolo Miglietta was appointed VP of APC's Southern African operations (replaces Rodney Callaghan).

A private equity company made a $120 million investment in Facebook.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Dell acquired Scalent, a maker of data centre software.
* Far EasTone Telecommunications (Taiwan), a mobile phone operator, bought New Century InfoComm Tech, its fixed-line affiliate, for $646.8 million.
* Gemalto acquired Cinterion Wireless Modules (Germany), a machine-to-machine vendor, for EUR163 million.
* Google bought ITA, an airline travel software company, for $700 million.
* GTL Infrastructure (India) purchased the mobile mast arm (Reliance Infratel) of Reliance Communications (India), for $11 billion.
* IBM acquired BigFix, a security software company that provides the capability for companies to automatically deliver security patches and software updates to PCs across its network. This is IBM's 11th security-related acquisition since 2006.
* MTS (Russia) bought the shares it doesn't already own of its subsidiary, Comstar, for $1.03 billion.
* Reliance Communications purchased Digicable, a cable TV services provider to create Asia's largest triple play provider (digital TV, broadband and voice services).
* Elevation Partners, a private equity company, made a $120 million investment in Facebook.
* IBM invested in Bright Oceans Inter-Telecom (China), a maker of computer parts and components.
* Panasonic made an additional investment in its LCD joint venture with Hitachi; it now owns 92%.
* Motorola said the names of its two companies after its proposed split in Q111 will be Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility.
* Versata has filed a complaint with the EU antitrust regulators against SAP.
* IPO filings on Nasdaq, from InvenSense, a motion processing solutions provider; and Linc Logistics, a logistics solutions provider.
* An IPO filing on the NYSE by Reald, a licensor of 3D technologies.

* International:
* Some surprises in the flood of quarterly results expected later this month.

* Africa:
* The winner of the auction for Mozambique's third mobile licence in which 22 companies were involved.

* South Africa:
* A possible tie-up between MTN and Loop Telecom, although the former has denied that talks are being held between the two companies.

* The worldwide WLAN market is expected to grow 23% this year to reach $2.1 billion, according to IDC.
* Worldwide wireless w-mail users will reach 1 billion by the end of 2014, according to Gartner.
* There will be over 5 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2010, according to ABI Research.
* Worldwide IT spending will be up 3.9% this year, according to Gartner, down from its 5.9% forecast made in Q1 earlier this year.

* JSE All share index: Down 3.5% (lowest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Down 5.9% (lowest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (-10.8%), CompuClearing (+11.5%), Datatec (-13.2%), Huge (+41.2%), Ifca Technologies (+100%), ISA (-7.9%), MICROmega (+22.5%) and Silverbridge (-7.9%)

IDC continues to update its market forecasts and its statistics on the local market size on a regular basis. From the latest numbers available, the local IT market will break through the R100 billion barrier next year with a growth forecast for 2011 of about 9%. The local telecommunications market broke through the R100 billion barrier in 2008.