Telcos get people talking

In addition to telecommunications companies providing communications services to the public last week, they had the public talking about them. Verizon's multibillion-dollar acquisition of Alltel was the talk of the international town; and at home, the deal with Vodacom and Telkom had everybody talking

* Excellent interim figures from Huge Group, with revenue and profit both up over tenfold.
* Very good interim numbers from AdaptIT Holdings, with revenue and profit both up over 35%.
* Good interim figures from Altron, with revenue up 19% and profit up 37%.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from Datacentrix, with revenue just up, but profit up about 20%.
* Very poor interim figures from Square One, only just in the black, although revenue up 17%.
* The listing on the JSE of Nasdaq-listed Net 1 UEPS Technologies (formerly Aplitec).
* Telkom announced it has agreed a R22.5 billion deal with Vodafone for an additional 15% stake in Vodacom, and then for a subsequent listing of Vodacom.

This deal, together with the Telkom media sell-off deal expected soon, leaves Telkom in a position to resurrect talks regarding its future with interested parties such as Mvelaphanda.

* Peter Watt was appointed non-executive chairman of Dialogue Group.
* Stephen Rodger resigned as group chairman of Dialogue Group.

Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel for $28.1 billion, in a move that will create the largest cellular services provider in the US.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CA acquired IDFocus, a provider of identity management technology.
* Oracle purchased Primavera, a provider of project portfolio management solutions.
* Nuance Communications bought Philips Speech Recognition Systems, a unit of Philips Electronics, for $96.1 million.
* Symantec acquired MessageLabs, a provider of online messaging and Web security services, for $695 million. In its latest fiscal year MessageLabs had revenue of $145 million.
* Tata Consultancy Services purchased Citigroup Global Services, part of the Citigroup, a global financial services company, for $505 million.
* Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel for $28.1 billion, in a move that will create the largest cellular services provider in the US.
* AMD will spin-off its manufacturing operations into a joint venture, which will receive up to $6 billion in funding from an investment company in Abu Dhabi. The new venture, called Foundry, will make chips for AMD and other companies and take over facilities that include large AMD factories in Germany. Most of the money to operate the venture will come from Advanced Technology Investment, an Abu Dhabi-based firm that will make a $700 million payment to AMD for its interest in the new company. Another company from the same country that already holds an 8% stake in AMD, the Mubadala Development, will pay $314 million for shares in AMD that will boost its stake to 19.4%.
* BT, Etisalat and Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research have signed a contract to create the Middle East's first international centre for telecommunications research and innovation.
* Huawei Technologies announced it has dropped the auction of its handset unit.
* Good quarterly numbers from Infosys Technologies (India).
* Edward Coleman was appointed chairman and CEO of Unisys. Coleman was responsible for restructuring Gateway, the PC maker, prior to its sell-off to Acer in 2007, and was also with IBM for 17 years.

* The possible acquisition of Fujitsu's disk drive unit by Toshiba or Western Digital.
* The possible sell-off of its Nextel unit by Sprint Nextel.
* A possible new deal between Microsoft and Yahoo.

In Taiwan's Top 20 Taiwanese Brands awards for 2008, Trend Micro (just) took over the top spot from Asus, with Acer and HTC retaining their number three and four slots respectively.

The Wall Street Journal has just published its Technology Innovation Winners for 2008. Among these were of specific interest to the ICT industry:

* Audience, a company that has designed technology to block background noise in cellphone calls;
* Cleversafe, a company that has created software that promises a more secure and reliable way to store sensitive computer files; and
* Salesforce.com, a company that has developed Force.com, a suite of tools that a business can use to build its own customised applications online.

I am currently out of the country on business; my next column will appear on Monday, 27 October and will cover a two-week period.