Thrilling telecoms ride

The international ICT market in the last two weeks has been fairly quiet leading up to the release of many sets of quarterly results this week, although some of the major players have made small acquisitions.

At home, the telecommunications sector has been extremely prominent, with much of the news centred around MTN's activities.

* Good full-year figures from Naspers, with revenue up nearly 20% and profit up 85%, although its Internet segment, which includes MWeb, was still in the red despite a 42% growth in its revenue.

* Good maiden year-end figures from TeliMatrix.

* Mediocre full-year numbers from Labat Africa, with revenue down although back in the black, just. Following the listing of TCS, the shares of Labat Africa are expected to be de-listed shortly.

* The acquisition by ContinuitySA, a member of the Dialogue Group, of SunGard Availability Services, a similar business.

* MTN's proposed acquisition of the remaining share (59%) in iTalk Cellular that it does not already own, through exercising a pre-emptive right. The deal seems to derail a move by the Huge Group (R511 million) for iTalk Cellular that had already been approved by the Competition Commission.

* MTN's R1.4 billion acquisition of Verizon Business, the African arm of Verizon Communications that is 70% owned by the US-based group, with the other 30% being owned by the local J&J Group. It seems Internet Solutions (IS) will oppose the deal when it is forwarded to the Competition Commission for approval. IS seems to take this step with any significant communications deal that could impact its business. This smells of sour grapes since it seems IS was not even on the short list. The deal, if approved, would make MTN SA's third largest ISP for corporate clients.

* The purchase by Tata Communications of the 30% of Neotel held by Eskom and Transnet, a move that would bring the Tata Group's shareholding up to 56%. This is a major step forward as it rids the company of state-owned enterprises and potentially allows Neotel to more easily raise any capital that it needs.

* The acquisition (believed to be 80%) by Safika Holdings of Goal Technology Solutions, a company that provides high-speed data services over power lines. The latter had been available for sale since the death in September 2007 of its chairman and major shareholder Miko Rwayitare. Telkom SA was also one of the other parties involved in concluding a potential deal.

* The 65% investment in value-added network service provider UniNet by ex-Telkom CEO Papi Molosane's Synglo Technologies. Also, Molotsane becomes chairman of UniNet.

* Vodacom's 40% investment in Zoopy.com, a social media networking company. The latter has been selected by Nokia as its regional imaging partner for SA and West Africa, and the Mail & Guardian has chosen it as its video delivery partner. The deal helps Vodacom to position itself as a multimedia operator as well as a converged telecommunications provider offering voice and data services.

* The 23.1% investment by CoroCapital, a subsidiary of Coronation Investments and Trading, in Total Client Services.

* The opening of IBM's African Innovation Centre in Johannesburg, a facility that will help companies develop their IT skills and help workers meet business challenges in sub-Saharan Africa.

* The termination of the listing of SAB&T Ubuntu on AltX following its acquisition by Simeka.

* ICASA stated that a company must be 51% black-owned if it wishes to apply for a WiMax licence. This move doesn't make any sense, as it would seem to exclude organisations such as MTN, and smacks of yet more interference from government, although ICASA is supposedly independent, in preventing the opening up of the South African telecommunications environment.

* Poynting Antennas, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, which manufactures antennas for wireless Internet access and for tracking stolen vehicles, intends to list on AltX in July.

* Vodacom has signed formal agreements with its strategic equity partners, Royal Bafokeng Holdings and Thebe, for its R7.5 billion empowerment deal.

* The appointment of Adam Rabie as the new president of the ITA. Rabie is MD of Bytes Public Sector Authorities, part of the BTG Group.

* The appointments of Lucky Khumelo as deputy CEO of EOH, Dilley Naidoo as CEO of OneCall Solutions, Inana Nkanza as MD of Sun Microsystems South Africa, Riaz Salojee as CEO of Saab South Africa, and Pfungwa Serima as MD of SAP Africa.

* The resignations of David Jarvis, founder and CEO of UniNet (stays on as an executive director); Claas Kuehnemann, MD of SAP Africa; and Pfungwa Serima, MD of Microsoft South Africa and its first black MD.

* Vodafone's $900 million acquisition of a majority stake (70%) in Ghana Telecom, that country's third largest mobile carrier, which also provides fixed-line and broadband services. Last year, Ghana Telecom had revenue of $290 million.

* The Rwandan president is about to request bids for a third national operator. Korea Telecom, Orascom and Zain (Celtel) have already expressed interest in bidding for this licence.

* Libya has become the first African country to pass the 100% cellular phone penetration level.

* The appointment of Jose Duarte as president and CEO of SAP's EMEA operations.

* The resignation of Emilio Ghilardi as senior VP and GM for AMD EMEA; Edwin Gunst, president and CEO of SAP's EMEA operations; and Gautam Srivastava, regional VP of ME, Africa and Pakistan for AMD.

* BT Group acquired SND and Stemmer, two German IT services companies, boosting its Global Services unit in Europe.

The deal helps Vodacom to position itself as a multimedia operator as well as a converged telecommunications provider offering voice and data services.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* IBM bought Platform Solutions, a competitor to IBM in the mainframe space with its hardware that runs the same operating system as IBM's Z-systems mainframes. Platform was started in 2003 by some Amdahl engineers.

* Imation's $10 million purchase of XtremeMac, a company focused on consumer electronics products and accessories for the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV markets.

* Microsoft acquired Portugal-based MobiComp, a mobile services company, enhancing its footprint in the mobile data protection and sharing services market.

* Microsoft's $100 million purchase of Powerset, an Internet search start-up. The move seems to be a direct result of Microsoft's failure to acquire Yahoo and likely to be the first of many other similar moves.

* Nokia snapped up Plazes, a German social networking start-up. This is the latest of several similar moves that have included the takeovers of Enpocket, Loudeye, Navteq and Twango.

* NEC bought NetCracker, a US-based software and solutions company focused on delivering operations support systems transformation to communications service providers.

* Nokia's EUR264 million acquisition of the remaining 52% of the shares of Symbian that it did not already own. These shares are currently held by some of its competitors, such as Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The intention is that Symbian, through the Symbian Foundation, will merge its several different flavours into one open source software platform that will include user interface software from UIQ Technology AB.

* The $12 million acquisition by Open Text, the worldwide leader of enterprise content management software, of the division of Spicer that specialises in file format viewer solutions for desktop applications, integrated BPM systems and reprographics. Spicer is a privately-owned company and supplies scalable, universal view-markup and collaboration software solutions.

* Oracle purchased Skywire Software, a provider of insurance software and document management business applications.

* Progress Software bought Iona Technologies ($162 million), an Irish software integration company and a vendor of CORBA technologies; and Mindreef, a SOA quality vendor.

* The $507.2 million (40.8%) investment by India's Idea Cellular in the country's Spice Communications. The merged entity, with 30 million subscribers, is now the fifth largest cellular operator in India behind Bharti Airtel (number one with nearly 70 million subscribers) and Reliance Communications (number two with nearly 50 million subscribers).

* France Telecom has abandoned its bid for TeliaSonera, a move that would have created the world's fourth largest telecommunications company after AT&T, NTT and Verizon Communications. France Telecom seems to have turned its attentions elsewhere for investments/acquisitions possibly in emerging market countries such as Algeria and Vietnam.

* NEC Electronics has entered a joint venture with Elpida Memory to develop and market chips for LCD TVs and other flat panel displays.

* Quarterly losses from 3Com (no profit from 3Com since the year 2000 and the latest quarterly loss is larger than last year's number) and Palm (revenue also down).

* The possible acquisition by Bharti Airtel of a Gulf-based cellular company, maybe Zain, although this has been specifically denied by the latter.

* According to IDC, the solid state drive market will increase at a CAGR of 70% over the period 2007 - 2012, with shipments at an even higher rate of 76%.

* The worldwide PC market is now over one billion units and expected to breach the two billion mark by 2014, says Gartner.

* According to IDC, the RDBMS market grew 12.6% to $18.8 billion in 2007.

* Worldwide server revenue grew 2.5% in Q108 to $13.3 billion, with IBM just managing to keep its nose in front of HP in the number one position. IBM and HP accounted for 57% of the market in Q108, says Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 8%

* Nasdaq: Down 6.7%

* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-17.6%), African Cellular Towers (-16.7%), BCX (-15.4%), Digicor (-17.2%), DVT (-22.4%), Eureka (+32.6%), Ifca Technologies (-44.4%), Labat Africa (+25%), MICROmega (-25%) and Simeka (-23.1%)

The UK Financial Times has released its FT Global 500 2008 list, which is done mainly by market capitalisation. From an ICT perspective, the highest ranking company is China Mobile at number five. Other interesting and unexpected rankings include Apple at 39, Nokia at 43, Research In Motion at 107, Bharti Airtel at 218, MTN at 322 and Reliance Communications at 351.