Samsung claws its way up

The economic recovery might well be on its way, if the flood of quarterly results in the international ICT market is anything to go by.

Additionally, Samsung Electronics' annual revenue in 2009 ($117.8 billion), which was announced last Friday, exceeded that of HP for HP's last full year ($114.6 billion), to the end of October 2009. This makes Samsung Electronics the second largest ICT company behind AT&T.

At home, continued concerns emanated from Faritec in an otherwise quiet week.

* An interim loss from Beget Holdings, with revenue also significantly down.
* A positive trading update from Poynting Antennas.
* Negative trading updates from Beget Holdings and Jasco Electronics.
* Tide Media is ceasing the publication of SACM with immediate effect.
* Maphum Nxumalo was named MD of SAS South Africa.

* Graham Braum was appointed regional manager of Africa and Levant for Acer.

Mobile phone shipments worldwide in Q408 grew 11.3%.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* AOL acquired StudioNow, a video production company, for $36.5 million.
* KDDI (Japan's second-largest telecommunications company) bought Liberty Global's 37.8% stake in Jupiter Telecommunications, a Japanese telecommunications services provider. The deal was worth $4 billion.
* Corel has de-listed from Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange, following its change of ownership to a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital.
* Very good quarterly figures from Apple Check Point Software Technologies, Infineon (back in the black), Samsung Electronics (back in the black), SanDisk (back in the black) and TSMC.
* Good quarterly numbers from CACI, LG Electronics, Microsoft, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from BMC Software, CA, Citrix Systems, Eastman Kodak (back in the black), EMC, Plantronics (back in the black), Qualcomm, Sanmina-SCI (back in the black), SAS, Sybase and Symantec (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Ariba, Compuware, Ericsson, Kyocera, NTT DoCoMo and SAP.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AT&T, with revenue down but profit up; Canon, with revenue down but profit up; Flextronics, with revenue down but back in the black; HCL Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Juniper Networks, with revenue up but profit down; Motorola, with revenue down but profit up; Nokia, with revenue down but profit up; Philips Electronics, with revenue down but profit up; Siemens, with revenue down but profit up; SK Telecom, with revenue up but profit down; VMware, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Adaptec, NEC, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and Verizon Communications.
* A planned IPO from Kabel Deutschland, Germany's largest cable company.

* International:
* Vivendi taking a controlling stake in Datacom Solutions (India), a mobile licence holder.
* The resignation of Didier Lombard, CEO of France Telecom.
* The fate of Kabel Deutschland since it is also being courted by private equity firms.

* Africa:
* Egypt offering a fourth mobile licence.

* South Africa:
* Further developments concerning the proposed restructuring of Faritec.

* Global solid state drive shipments grew 14% in 2009, and are expected to show an average CAGR of 54% over the 2008-2013 period, according to IDC.
* Android will be the number two mobile operating system by 2013, according to IDC.
* Worldwide PC microprocessor shipments in Q409 were up 31.3% compared to Q408, reports IDC.
* Mobile phone shipments worldwide in Q408 grew 11.3% to 325.3 million units, says IDC.
* Forty percent of business managers and knowledge workers in Global 2000 enterprises will use comprehensive business process models to support their daily work, up from 6% in 2009, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.6%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (-9.2%), CompuClearing (+16%), Dialogue Group (-14.3%), Jasco Electronics (-13.3%), Labat Africa (+383.3%), Silverbridge (-16.7%), Spescom (+15.9%), TeleMasters (+11.1%) and Zaptronix (-25%)

The first ranking of the world's most sustainable companies has been published in Forbes magazine. The research was conducted by Canadian-based Corporate Knights. From a technology perspective and included in the top 100 are BT Group, Intel, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, SAP, Trend Micro and Vodafone.

However, and perhaps most surprisingly, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sony and a host of other big names are not included.