Qualcomm coughs up

The international quarterly results flood dominated the international scene last week. At home, Datatec disinvested from African Legend Indigo.

* Mixed interim numbers from ConvergeNet, with revenue up 30%, but profit slightly down.
* A negative trading update from Paracon.
* AMD has closed its SA office in Johannesburg, in a move that will see South Africa handled from Dubai.
* Datatec is shedding its stake in Africa Legend Indigo, in a deal that will also see its shareholding in Westcon increase from 55% to 74.9%.

* Mixed quarterly figures from MobiNil (Egypt), with revenue up, but profit down.
* The redeployment of Kelvin Caruso, CEO of Nitel.

AMD has closed its SA office in Johannesburg, in a move that will see South Africa handled from Dubai.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Fujitsu acquired the Australian and South East Asia operations of Supply Chain Consulting, a SAP integrator, for $34.7 million.
* Trend Micro bought Canada-based Third Brigade, a security and compliance software company.
* China Mobile made a 12% investment in Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) (Taiwan).
* NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology merged.
* Qualcomm and Broadcom have settled their patent dispute, with the former coughing up $891 million.
* The Amkor Technology, Nakaya Microdevices and Toshiba joint venture, in Japan, will provide LSI assembly and testing services.
* Good quarterly numbers from Baidu (China), Bharti Airtel (India) and McAfee.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ACS, CACI, Capgemini, Check Point Software Technologies, China Unicom, Comcast, Tech Mahindra (back in the black) and Verizon Communications.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Arrow Electronics, Canon, Citrix Systems, Gemalto, Hon Hai Precision Industry, HTC, Ingram Micro, Iron Mountain, Micros Systems, NTT DoCoMo, SAP and Time Warner.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Chunghwa Telecom (revenue down, but profit up), Compal (revenue up, but profit down), DST Systems (revenue down, but profit up), Ericsson (revenue up, but profit down), France Telecom (revenue up, but profit down), Quanta Computer (revenue down, but profit up), Qwest Communications International (revenue down, but profit up), Reliance Communications (revenue up, but profit down) and Rogers Communications (revenue up, but profit down).
* Very poor quarterly figures from Mitsubishi Electric (profit down 92%).
* Quarterly losses from Ariba, Eastman Kodak, Flextronics, JDS Uniphase, Level 3 Communications, Motorola, Qualcomm, Sharp (also first-ever annual loss), Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Sun Microsystems and Unisys.
* A planned IPO from SolarWinds, a provider of network management software.

* International:
* The spin-off by Time Warner of its AOL unit, maybe via an IPO.
* The sell-off by Nortel Networks of its stake in its joint venture with LG Electronics.
* Africa:
* The possible buy-out of Telecel (Zimbabwe) by MTN.

* Notebook shipments will reach 170 million units this year and 200 million units in 2010, according to JT Wang, chairman of Acer. Of the latter, 25% will be netbooks.
* Worldwide mobile shipments were down 15.8% in Q109 to 244.8 million units, reports IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.1%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.5%
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Mining (-11.3%), Beget Holdings (-33.3%), Dynamic Cables (+70%), EOH (-10.9%), Faritec (+20%), Spescom (-18.4%), TCS (+66.7%) and Vox Telecom (+11.1%)

CIO.com recently published a list of 10 makers of virtualisation management, configuration and monitoring tools that it believes are worth watching in 2009. They are Akorri, CiRBA, Embotics, Marathon Technologies, Neterion, Netuitive, Reflex Systems, Scalent Systems, Third Brigade (just acquired by Trend Micro) and VKernel.