The international ICT market was dominated last week by the EU's approval of the proposed Oracle/Sun Microsystems deal. At home, it was still extremely quiet.
Key local news of the past week
* A positive trading update from GijimaAst.
* Spescom has entered a strategic partnership with NewTelco to create NewTelco South Africa, a carrier-neutral company-location services provider.
* The retirement of Gerhard van der Merwe, SA country manager of EMC.
Key African news
* The Republic of Congo has awarded a fourth network operator licence to Equateur Telecom Congo, a subsidiary of Bintel (Bahrain).
* MTN's head office of its West and Central Africa region is to be located in Ghana.
Key international news
* AU Optronics (Taiwan) acquired certain assets and technology of Field Emission Technologies (FET) and FET Japan. FET is a leader in field emission displays and is 39.8% owned by Sony.
* CACI International purchased SystemWare, a security contractor that designs, manufactures, and provides signals acquisition and analysis systems to monitor and detect cyber security and physical security vulnerabilities.
* IBM bought National Interest Security, an IT company.
* Molina Healthcare, a health insurer, acquired Unisys' health information management business for $135 million.
* Tata Communications purchased BT's Mosaic business, which offers an on-demand digital media management platform.
* Xerox bought Irish Business Systems, a managed print services provider and a supplier of digital imaging and printing solutions, for $31 million.
* The EU has given its approval for the Oracle/Sun Microsystems deal.
* Very good quarterly figures from AMD (back in the black), LG Display (back in the black), Seagate Technology (back in the black) and Western Digital.
* Good quarterly numbers from ASML Holding (back in the black), F5 Networks, Google, Hynix Semiconductor (back in the black) and Tata Consultancy Services.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Affiliated Computer Services, Bharti Airtel, IBM, Saudi Telecom and Wipro.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Amdocs, with revenue down but profit up; Imation, with revenue down but profit up (back in the black); Logitech, with revenue down but profit up; Tech Mahindra, with revenue up but profit down; and Xerox, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Sony Ericsson.
* Masami Yamamoto was appointed president of Fujitsu.
Look out for
* The new country manager for EMC.
Research results and predictions
* IT budgets will essentially be flat for 2010 compared to an 8.1% decline in 2009, ie, at 2005 levels, according to a Gartner CIO survey.
* Worldwide IT spending will reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 4.6% increase from 2009, according to Gartner.
Stock market changes
Worldwide IT spending will reach $3.4 trillion in 2010.
Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners
* JSE All share index: Down 3.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 3.6%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (+13%), Ansys (-14.9%), CompuClearing (-13.8%), DTH (-20%), Faritec (-20%), Labat Africa (-14.3%), Poynting Antennas (+30%), TCS (+25%), TeleMasters (-13.5%) and Zaptronix (+33.3%)
Final word
Formula Capital's James Altucher has predicted four technology M&As for 2010. They are:
* Microsoft and AOL, a much cheaper move than the purchase of Yahoo.
* Oracle and VeriSign.
* Dell and Polycom, a move that would give Dell the number two spot in video conferencing (behind Cisco).
* Google and Blackboard, the latter potentially doing for Google in online education what YouTube did for it in online video.
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