SCO files for bankruptcy protection

The international ICT world was dominated last week with the SCO Chapter 11 announcement. At home, the winners of the pay-TV licences stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* A full-year loss by Sentech, but lower than the loss of 2006.
* Positive trading updates from Digicore and EOH.
* Digicore acquired minority interests in its offshore subsidiary, Digicore Europe BV.
* Pay-TV licences were awarded to e-SAT, MultiChoice Africa, On Digital Media, Telkom Media and Walking on Water.
* Harvey Jones Systems was appointed distributor in southern Africa for ProfitBase, a BI specialist; and SecureData was appointed sole distributor for US-based Guidance Software.

* The Gambian government will sell its shares in Gamtel/Gamcel.
* Sudatel (Sudan) won a new comprehensive telecommunications licence to provide mobile services in Senegal.
* Mainstreet Technologies (Nigeria) will become part of a new African West Coast fibre initiative to compete with SAT3.
* Mobile operator Moov has resumed its services in Benin.

Pay-TV licences were awarded to e-SAT, MultiChoice Africa, On Digital Media, Telkom Media and Walking on Water.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The SCO Group filed for a voluntary petition for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy laws.
* BT Group acquired INS Group, a Belgian network and systems integrator. This is about the fifth purchase by BT Group of a small services company in the past few months.
* HP purchased MacDermid ColorSpan, a developer of wide-format digital inkjet printers.
* Intel bought Havok, a provider of interactive software and services used by digital media creators in the game and movie industries.
* Sun Microsystems acquired Cluster File Systems, a provider of parallel file systems.
* Xerox bought Advectis, a provider of paperless document collaboration software to the mortgage industry, for $32 million.
* Yahoo acquired BuzzTracker, a company that searches Web sites and blogs for news items and organises them by topic.
* Good half-year numbers from Tiscali, with revenue up nearly 25% and back in the black.
* Philips Electronics was restructured into three units: healthcare, lighting and consumer lifestyle.

* The buy-out of business software developer BEA Systems.
* Vivendi SA's investment in Oger Telecom, the owner of Cell C.

* According to iSuppli, Lenovo beat Acer for worldwide PC shipments in Q207 to re-take the number three position, behind Dell and HP.
* CRM software revenue will exceed $4.7 billion this year, up 14% from 2006, according to Gartner.
* Digital frames worldwide shipments reached 2.8 million units in 2006, but will rise to 42.3 million units by 2011, says IDC.
* Security software revenue in EMEA is expected to total EUR2.4 billion in 2007 and reach EUR3.5 billion by 2011, reports Gartner.
* According to IDC, worldwide PC shipments will rise by 12.6% in 2007 to 257.5 million units and to 362.4 million units by 2011.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.2%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.4%
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (-14.3%), Datatec (-9.6%), GijimaAst (-8.8%), SecureData (+10.5%), Simeka BSG (+10.8%), TeleMasters (+10.5%) and Vestor (+12.7%)

The shortlists for the World Communications Awards for 2007 have been published. Notable entries include Vishvas Sethi (Botswana Telecommunications) as one of the Best Change-Maker finalists; Mobinil (Egypt) as one of the Best Brand finalists; and VSNL as one of the Best Wholesale Carrier finalists.