Tech giants finance Linaro

The international ICT market was quiet last week, following a public holiday in both the UK and US. The creation of Linaro was one of the main stories. At home, Telkom SA CEO Reuben September's 'retirement' dominated the local ICT media space.

Internet traffic is set to quadruple over the next four years.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* An interim loss from Zaptronix, with revenue also down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Huge Group, with revenue down 6% but profit up over 20%.
* A negative trading update from TCS.
* The listing of the shares of the Cape Empowerment Trust was terminated.
* Xantha Properties proposed a R30.2 million acquisition of Dynamic Technology Holdings, a company that will be de-listed from AltX once the deal is approved.
* Sekunjalo made a 25% investment in Saab SA.
* Peter Balchin was appointed CEO of UEC, part of the Altech group; and David Meintjes was named MD of Connection Telecom.
* Reuben September will 'retire' from his position of CEO of Telkom SA (as from November).

* Globacom (Nigeria) has won a licence to operate in Senegal.
* MWeb Namibia will change its name to AfricaOnline following the acquisition of MWeb's African companies and the AfricaOnline Group by Telkom SA, and the subsequent integration of the companies under the Telkom-owned Pan-African company, iWay Africa.
* MWeb Zimbabwe changed its name to iWayAfrica Zimbabwe.
* Kevin Carter was appointed VP of Polycom for the EMEA region.

*Capgemini Financial Services, a subsidiary of Capgemini, acquired Plaisir Informatique, a French company specialising in data migrations in the banking and insurance sector.

*CDC Software purchased Information Development Consultants, a cloud-based SaaS enterprise resource planning software solution provider.

*Internet Initiative Japan bought AT&T's Japanese operations that are focused on domestic outsourcing services, for $100 million.

*Sonic Solutions, a digital media software company, acquired DivX, a video technology organisation, for $300 million.

*The Capita Group, a major UK-based IT services company, purchased Premier Medical Group, a provider of medical reporting and screening services.

*A Thoma Bravo investor-led group bought SonicWALL, a provider of IT security and data backup and recovery solutions, for $717 million.

*Six large technology companies are to fund a non-profit company, Linaro, to help speed the development of Linux-based software for mobile phones, tablet PCs and other products/devices.

*Wang Jianzhou was appointed chairman of China Mobile (was president), and Li Yue was named president of the company.

International:

* The possible investment by Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) in India's Reliance Communications.
* The outcome of Telefonica's increased bid (EUR6.5 billion) for Portugal Telecom's shareholding in Brazil's mobile operator, Vivo.

Africa:

* The decision regarding the tender for the 75% stake in Zamtel (Zambia).

South Africa:

* Further news regarding the discussions between MTN and Orascom.

* The South African IT market grew 2.5% in 2009 to reach R61.85 billion, according to BMI-TechKnowledge, and the company expects similar growth this year. These figures are significantly different to those from both Gartner and IDC, with the latter suggesting a growth rate this year approaching 10% following an 8% decline in 2009, and a market size that is at least 20% larger!

* The EMEA server market in the first quarter grew 7.4% compared to the same period last year, to reach $3.2 billion, according to IDC.

* The global semiconductor market will grow 27% this year to $290 billion, a figure up 7% from Gartner's previous forecast, the analyst company says.

* Western Digital shipped the most hard disk drives of any storage supplier in the first quarter, surpassing Seagate Technology for the first time, according to iSuppli.

* Internet traffic is set to quadruple over the next four years to about 767 exabytes by 2014, according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index.

* The worldwide external controller-based disk storage market was up over 18% in the first quarter, according to Gartner, with NetApp grabbing the number three slot behind EMC and IBM. HP slumped to number six.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.4%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.7%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-15%), Amecor (+11.4%), Ansys (-8.7%), Beget Holdings (+50%), Cape Empowerment (+13.6%), ConvergeNet (-8.6%), DTH (+32.1%), FoneWorx (+9.3%), MICROmega (+30%), MiX Telematics (-12.6%) and Poynting Antennas (+20%)

Forbes magazine has published its Top 100, a composite ranking by sales, profit, assets and market value. From a technology perspective, AT&T came in at number 13 (the highest technology stock), followed by Telefonica at number 32, IBM at 33, HP at 35, Verizon Communications at 37, China Mobile at 38, NTT at 41, Vodafone at 46, and Microsoft at 49. Also in the top 100 were (in alphabetical order), Apple, Cisco, France Telecom, Intel and Samsung Electronics.