Samsung, ZTE on comeback trail

The ICT world was quiet last week, apart from the quarterly results from many countries - particularly encouraging numbers came from Samsung Electronics and ZTE. At home, the findings of the competitions board regarding Telkom's abuse of dominance stole much of the headline space.

* Excellent interim numbers from Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue up 71% and profit up 143%.
* A negative trading update from MiX Telematics.
* Ingram Micro was appointed the third distributor for Acer in SA.
* Gawie Erasmus was named CEO of SDT, the financial services software unit of Silverbridge Holdings.

* Q-Venture Holdings and Eaton Telecom Infrastructure merged. The two are pan-African telecommunications and IT service providers.
* Dimension Data made a 51% investment in Moroccan-based Telcom, a telecommunications infrastructure services provider.

Look out for the outcome of the abuse of dominance findings against Telkom SA.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Amdocs acquired jNetX, a leading provider in the service delivery platform market, which is expected to grow by a CAGR of 14% and reach $6 billion by 2013. The deal was worth $50 million.
* Cisco bought ScanSafe, a Web security company, for $183 million.
* Dassault Systemes (France) purchased IBM's sales and client support operations, which encompasses its product lifecycle management software portfolio, for $600 million.
* Hitachi acquired Nortel Networks' assets associated with the development of next-generation packet core network components, for $10 million.
* FairPoint Communications will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of its restructuring plan, following its $2.3 billion acquisition of Verizon's landlines in New England, in early 2008.
* Giesecke & Devrient (Germany), Nokia and SAP have set up an anti-piracy company that will deliver unique product authentication and anti-counterfeiting services across the globe, to fight multibillion-dollar counterfeit and pirate products businesses.
* Very good quarterly figures from Samsung Electronics and ZTE (China).
* Good quarterly numbers from CACI and MicroStrategy.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Acer, Bharti Airtel, Flextronics (back in the black), HCL, Informatica, SK Telecom, Softbank, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Wipro and Yahoo Japan.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Canon, Chunghwa Telecom, Ciber, Corning, Forrester Research, France Telecom, Ingram Micro, Kyocera, Micros Systems, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Qwest Communications, Ricoh and TomTom.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Ariba, with revenue down, but back in the black; Asustek, with revenue down, but profit up; BMC Software, with revenue down, but profit up; Gartner, with revenue down, but profit up; HCL Technologies, with revenue up, but profit down; KPN, with revenue down, but profit up; McAfee, with revenue up, but profit down; Open Text with revenue up, but profit down; Quanta (Taiwan), with revenue up, but profit down; Rogers Communications, with revenue up, but profit down; SAP, with revenue down, but profit up; Symantec, with revenue down, but profit up; Tellabs, with revenue down, but back in the black; Toshiba, with revenue down, but back in the black; Unisys, with revenue down, but back in the black; and Verizon Communications, with revenue up, but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Arrow Electronics, Epicor and Motorola (but back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from Adaptec, Alcatel-Lucent, Eastman Kodak, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Plantronics, SMIC, Sony and Sprint Nextel.

* International:
* Further disposals by Nortel Networks.
* South Africa:
* The outcome of the abuse of dominance findings against Telkom SA, that could result in a fine of up to 10% of Telkom's annual turnover.
* A possible JSE listing by iBurst.

* The ultra-mobile device market will reach 385 million shipped units by 2014, according to ABI Research.
* Eighty percent of enterprise collaboration platforms will be primarily based on Web 2.0 techniques by 2013, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide mobile phone shipments in Q309 reached 287.1 million units, down 6% on Q308, reports IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.6%
* Nasdaq: Down 5.1%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-16.7%), Amecor (+10.9%), Beget Holdings (+33.3%), Dynamic Cables (+21.4%), FoneWorx (+8.2%), Labat Africa (-33.3%) and TCS (+16.7%)

CIO Insight has published its Top 40 Tech Vendors of 2009. This study reveals what CIOs think of hardware, software, security, telecommunications and networking providers in terms of value, reliability and loyalty. At the top was Intel, followed by Google, Red Hat and Siemens as equal number twos. APC came in at number five, followed by Cisco, HP and Sun at equal sixes. RIM was at nine and NetApp at 10.