Orange bags Unanimis

France Telecom (Orange) made an intriguing purchase, buying digital advertising network Unanimis. At home, MTN's results stole much of the ICT headline space.

* Very good interim figures from MTN, with revenue up almost 25% and profit up over 30%.
* Good year-end numbers from Blue Label Telecoms, with revenue up 22% and profit up over 75%.
* Mixed year-end figures from GijimaAst, with revenue up 20%, but profit slightly down; and Mustek, with revenue up 2%, but profit down 40%.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Net1 UEPS, with revenue down 3% and profit very slightly down.
* A negative trading update from CompuClearing.
* Telkom de-listed from the NYSE.
* Nashua, a subsidiary of Reunert, made a R50 million (60%) acquisition of one of its top franchises, Nashua Central.
* Aureos Capital made an additional investment in Sandbox Holdings, which raises its shareholding to 39%.
* MTN has walked away from its proposed takeover of 17 Musica stores.
* Emergent Process Management was appointed as the agent for Cordys Technology in Africa.
* James Rutherford was named MD of Autopage Cellular.
* Stephen Blewett resigned as MD of Autopage Cellular; and Mohamed Kajee, a co-founder of Sekunjalo, resigned.

* Mediocre interim results from Orascom Egypt.
* Seacom announced a partnership with Rwandatel and Uganda Telecom, both subsidiaries of Libyan Africa Portfolio LAP Green Networks.

MTN has walked away from its proposed takeover of 17 Musica stores.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Ericsson bought Nortel Networks' wireless unit, in an auction battle with Nokia Siemens Networks.
* France Telecom (Orange) purchased Unanimis, the UK's largest exclusive digital advertising network.
* Research In Motion acquired Torch Mobile, a company that is developing a Web browser for all phones.
* Syniverse purchased VeriSign's messaging unit for $175 million.
* Tibco bought DataSynapse, an enterprise grid and cloud computing software provider, for $28 million.
* TeliaSonera acquired the remaining shares it doesn't already own in its two subsidiaries, TEO LT (Lithuania) and Eesti Telecom (Estonia), for $687.7 million.
* TI bought the assets of Qimonda Richmond, part of the bankrupt Germany-based semiconductor manufacturer, for $172.5 million.
* Vimicro International, a multimedia semiconductor and solution provider, purchased the Video Surveillance Systems business from Alcatel Lucent Shanghai Bell.
* Yahoo acquired Maktoob.com, the world's largest Arabic-language portal.
* Australia's sovereign wealth fund (ie, the Australian government) has sold its 34% stake in Telstra to institutional investors.
* Fujitsu has sold off its remaining 5% stake in Fanuc, an industrial robot maker.
* Good quarterly numbers from HCL Technologies (India).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Blue Coat Systems, Gemalto and VimpelCom (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Acer, China Unicom, Dell, Inventec (Taiwan), Micros and Quanta Computer (Taiwan).
* Mixed quarterly figures from China Telecom (revenue up, but profit down) and Novell (revenue down, but back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from Asustek, QAD and Sun Microsystems.
* Richard Egan, founder and chairman of EMC, died.

* International:
* A possible tie-up between Casio, Hitachi and NEC of their combined mobile handset operations, a move that would make the joint venture the second largest cellphone maker by shipments in Japan, after Sharp.
* Africa:
* The upcoming privatisation (again) of NITEL/Mtel (Nigeria).
* South Africa:
* A possible acquisition bid in South Africa by France Telecom (Orange).
* The appointment of a new country manager for HP.

* The worldwide printer, copier and multifunction product market declined 20.2% in H109, to 51.3 million units, reports Gartner.
* Worldwide semiconductor revenue is expected to total $212 billion in 2009, 17% down from 2008, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: up 1.5% (highest weekend close since September 2008)
* Nasdaq: up 0.4% (highest weekend close since September 2008)
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Mining (-13.2%), Altech (+12.7%), Beget Holdings (+50%), GijimaAst (+27%), ISA (+17.6%), Labat Africa (+20%), Mustek (+10.5%), Poynting Antennas (-12.5%), TCS (-40%) and Zaptronix (+33.3%)

At IDC's recent CIO Conference, its top 10 predictions for the ICT industry for 2009 and beyond were presented. They are:

* A focus on cost reduction, sustainability and innovation to support business development.
* Data centre efficiency at the forefront in order to better utilise assets.
* A stronger uptake for managed services around specific workloads and activities.
* Interest around cloud computing models.
* A major shift to application modernisation and consolidation.
* Enterprise information integration, thus providing better access to critical information.
* The roll-out of integrated ICT solutions with wider unified communications adoption.
* Data explosion that forces companies to address data management and information access.
* Regulatory compliance and IT governance - a critical part of IT strategy development and operations.
* Security issues, which remain at the top of the priority list.