Progress for Telkom competitor

The international ICT market was dominated last week by the Disney/Pixar merger and the Microsoft decision re the pending EU sanctions. As the quarterly results flowed, excellent/very good numbers came from AT&T, Cingular Wireless and Juniper Networks; however, Ariba, Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems and Unisys posted disappointing numbers.

On the local ICT front it was again quiet, but the appointment of a CEO for the second national operator (SNO) was a significant step forward for Telkom`s competitor.

* Microsoft relented on its Windows source code availability to appease the European Commission.
* Disney finally nailed Pixar in a deal worth $7.4 billion.
* The appointment of Ajay Pandey, a senior executive of the Tata Group, as CEO of the SNO, which is trading as SNO Telecommunications.

There has been much speculation over the fate of Prism following the issuing of a cautionary announcement.

Conjecture

* The appointments of Jere Brown as CEO of Dimension Data`s North American operations and Bridget Kelly as country manager for Avaya.
* MTN sold off its subsidiary, Orbicom, to MultiChoice.
* The 30% management investment in TelePassport, in a deal funded by the NEF.
* UUNet SA changed its name to Verizon Business SA.
* Quintica, a service management company, opened a South African office.

* The 51% investment in Intercellular Nigeria by South African GVT/Telecel.
* Telkom SA is looking at possible expansion into Angola, Botswana, DRC, Kenya and Nigeria.
* Gabon Telecom began its privatisation process for a sell-off of a majority 51% stake.
* The take-over of Seychelles ISP, Atlas, by Cable & Wireless.
* Good Q4 revenues from Maroc Telecom.

* IBM made two small acquisitions.
* Implicit Solutions changed its name to Implicit Monitoring Solutions.
* The appointments of Henry Duques as chairman of Unisys, Jaime Ellertson as CEO of Gomez, Jay Fulcher as CEO of Agile Software, Dirk Meyer as president and COO of AMD, Scott Murray as president and CEO of 3Com and Frank Plastina as CEO of Tekelec.
* The resignations of Gary Bloom as president of Symantec.
* Analyst upgrades for Accenture, Adtran, Altiris, Andrew, Ariba, BEA Systems, BellSouth, CheckFree, Cognos, Convergys, Cypress Semiconductor, First Data, Kronos, Lexmark, Macrovision, MEMC Electronic Materials, Mercury Interactive, NetLogic Microsystems, Packeteer, Research in Motion, RF Micro Devices, Rudolph Technologies, SAP, Sierra Wireless, Silicon Labs, Sun Microsystems, Vasco Data security, Vitesse Semiconductor and Yahoo.
* Analyst downgrades for 3M, Adobe, Altera, Applied Materials, Arrow Electronics, Avaya, CDW, Celestica, Ciber, Coherent, Corning, DiamondCluster International, Digitas, EchoStar Communications, Entrust, Extreme Networks, First Data, Getty Images, Juniper Networks, KLA-Tencor, Maxim Integrated Products, McAfee, MKS Instruments, Pervasive Software, Qualcomm, Skyworks Solutions, Symantec, Syniverse Holdings, Take-Two Interactive Software and TI.
* Positive results announcements from InterDigital Communications, NSB Retail Systems, SK Telecom and Sony.
* Negative result warnings from Cadmus Communications, Ciber, McAfee and UbiSoft.
* Job loss announcements from Lexmark.
* Planned IPOs by Russia`s telecommunications operator, Comstar United TeleSystems and NTELOS Holdings.

* Siemens AG`s possible acquisition of China-based Harbour Networks.
* EDS`s possible investment in India`s Mphasis BFL Group.

* According to a survey of 1 400 CIOs conducted by Gartner, executives now expect IT to play a significant role in business growth and competitiveness, a shift that will accelerate in 2006.
* Q4 of 2005 saw new records for mobile phone shipments, largely driven by vendors stocking the channels in time for the holiday season, with mobile phone shipments rising 19.3% year over year and increasing sequentially 16.8% to reach a single quarter record of 245.2 million units, says IDC. In addition, worldwide converged mobile device shipments rose 100.3% year over year and increased sequentially 20% during the quarter to reach 16.8 million units. For the full year 2005, worldwide mobile phone shipments totalled 825.5 million units, a 16.7% increase over the 707.3 million shipments in 2004. Shipments of converged mobile devices reached 55.6 million units for 2005, an increase of 165.3% over 2004.

* JSE All share index: Up 4.4% (a record weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 2.5%
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (+14.3%), Cape Empowerment Trust (-15.4%), CompuClearing (-8.2%), Datatec (+8.1%), EOH (+10.3%), ISA (-14%), Simeka (-12.2%) and Vesta (+14.3%).
* Top international share movements: Com21 (+28.6%), Epicus Communications (-44.4%), Glen Group (-30%), Micro Component Technology (+63.2%), Netcall (+31%), Poly Information (-36.4%), RadView (-34.6%), Scan-Optics (-37.5%), Trafficmaster (+72.6%) and Zoo Digital (-57.3%).

There has been much speculation over the fate of Prism following the issuing of a cautionary announcement. Maybe this week will reveal the predator, a role already denied by GijimaAst.