MTN makes the grade

The IPO announcement from Vodacom dominated the local ICT arena, while the international ICT world was quiet.

* Good full-year figures from MIP Holdings, with revenue and profit both up over 10%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Digicore, with revenue down 7% but profit up 6%; and GijimaAst, with revenue up 25% but profit slightly down.
* Mediocre interim numbers from Rectron, with revenue down 1% and profit down 23%.
* An interim loss from CompuClearing (revenue flat).
* A full-year loss from Ifca Technologies, with revenue also down 40%.
* Philippine-based eTelecare Global Solutions bought Cape Town-based BPO company, The Phone House, part of UK-based Talk Talk Group, the telecommunications arm of Carphone Warehouse.
* Telkom SA announced an IPO of Vodacom in May 2009.
* Stafford Masie resigned as head of Google's South African operations.
* James Theledi, CEO of USAASA, was dismissed.

* Maroc Telecom acquired 51% of Sotelma (Mali), for EUR252 million. Maroc Telecom is already a major shareholder in Gabon Telecom, Mauritel (Mauritania) and Onatel (Burkina Faso).
* Alliance Mining Namibia was established, in conjunction with EPiA Minerals, a subsidiary of EPiA Holdings, a Namibian empowerment group.
* Seacom's fibre-optic cable has now arrived at Mombasa, Kenya.

Worldwide spending on cloud computing will reach $42 billion by 2012, according to IDC.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Bell Canada purchased Circuit City's Canadian operations, the latter being in Chapter 11 proceedings.
* Fujitsu acquired Australia-based KAZ Group, the IT services arm of Telstra, for $128 million.
* France-based Sagem Communications bought Gigaset Communications' broadband and WiMax business. This is the first acquisition by Sagem since it was acquired by Gores Group, a US-based private equity company, back in January 2008.
* AMD has spun off its chip manufacturing operations in conjunction with Advanced Technology Investment Company, an Abu Dhabi investment fund, into a new venture called Globalfoundries. It will also seek to acquire other manufacturing contracts. The new company's chairman will be Hector Ruiz, the former chairman of AMD.
* Satyam received approval to offer a 51% stake in the company to an investor.
* Spansion, the world's largest pure-play provider of flash memory, has applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Spansion was formerly a joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu.
* The Taiwanese government will establish a new government-backed company that will buy key technology from foreign competitors in the D-Ram chip industry and consolidate its local market. This initiative is intended to transform the global memory chip industry by aligning Taiwan's large production base with technology from either Japan or the US, which would compete with Samsung.
* Satisfactory full-year numbers from Zain, with revenue up 26%, profit up 6% and an increase in its customer base to 63.5 million, an increase of 50%.
* Mixed quarterly figures from France Telecom, with revenue just up but profit down; Hutchison Telecom, with revenue up but profit down 97%; and Telecom Italia, with revenue down 3% but profit up 95%.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Blue Coat Systems, with revenue up 35% but profit down 90%.
* Quarterly losses from ADC (revenue also down 28%), Nortel Networks (revenue also down).
* Bruce Clafin (ex CEO of 3Com) was appointed chairman of AMD; Mikael Grahne was named president and CEO of Millicom Cellular International; Paul Jacobs was appointed chairman of Qualcomm; and Hector Ruiz was named chairman of Globalfoundries.
* Marc Beuls resigned as president and CEO of Millicom Cellular International, and Irwin Jacobs resigned as chairman of Qualcomm.
* Hector Ruiz, chairman of AMD, retired.
* A planned IPO from Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications International, for its Hong Kong business.

* Further sell-offs from Motorola and Nortel Networks.

* Worldwide PC shipments will fall 11.9% in 2009 to 257 million units, although worldwide mini-notebook shipments are expected to rise to 21 million units in 2009 from 11.7 million units in 2008, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide mobile phone sales to end-users totalled 314.7 million units in Q408, a decline of 4.6% from Q407, reported Gartner.
* Worldwide server shipments declined 11.7% in Q408, while server revenue decreased 15.1%, said Gartner. IBM and HP remained in the top two positions, followed by Dell and Sun Microsystems. In EMEA there was a decline of 9.2% in shipments and 20.6% in revenue.
* Worldwide shipments of PCs fell 1.9% in Q408, reported IDC.
* Worldwide spending on cloud computing will reach $42 billion by 2012, according to IDC.
* Worldwide external disk storage systems market declined 0.5% in Q408, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1%
* Nasdaq: Down 6.1% (lowest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (+50%), Ifca Technologies (-50%), Labat Africa (+50%), MiX Telematics (+21.2%), Poynting Antennas (+20%), SecureData (-25%), Silverbridge (-36.7%), Spescom (+37.2%), Vox Telecom (-23.3%) and Zaptronix (-25%)

The latest edition of The Africa Report includes this year's 'Africa's Top 500 Companies' listing. From a technology perspective, MTN is the highest at number five, followed by Telkom SA and Vodacom Group. From an IT perspective, there is only one company listed outside of SA, Egypt-based Raya Holding, at number 237, an IT, telecommunications and services holding company.