Top of the tech pops

The international ICT world was dominated last week by the approval of Bharti's deal with Zain for its African operations, and a raft of small acquisitions; while at home it was an extremely quiet week.

* Negative trading updates from Cape Empowerment Trust, Datacentrix and Dynamic Cables.
* The R22 million (56%) acquisition by UCS of CQuential, a provider of supply chain and warehousing solutions.
* The 51% acquisition by Imperial Logistics, a division of Imperial Holdings, of e-Logics, a provider of logistics and supply chain management software as well as transportation and asset management solutions.
* The yet to be approved merger of Digicape and Project 3, two of Cape Town's Apple resellers.

* Bharti Airtel's $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain Telecom's African assets, which has now been approved by the former's board.
* The Tanzanian Communications Regulatory Authority has licensed five more mobile phone companies: Egotel, ExcellentCom, MyCell, Rural Netco and Smile.

* The $104 million acquisition by Amdocs of MX Telecom, a mobile messaging and payment company.
* Informatica purchased 29West, a pioneer in ultra-low latency messaging technology.
* Intersil, a maker of analogue and mixed-signal semiconductors, bought Techwell, a fabless semiconductor company. This is yet another move in the ongoing consolidation that is happening within the semiconductor industry. In December 2009, Intersil also bought Rock Semiconductor.
* Nokia's acquisition of Novarra, a mobile browser that is intended to improve Web surfing on a wide range of Nokia's low-end and mid-range phones.
* Research In Motion purchased Viigo, a company that has built a platform that makes it easy for publishers and other content companies to develop applications for the BlackBerry platform.
* Tibco Software snapped up Netrics, a provider of enterprise data matching software products.
* Novell has rejected an unsolicited bid for the company from Elliott Associates, but is putting itself up for sale.
* Cable & Wireless has successfully split into two separately-listed units: C&W Communications and C&W Worldwide.
* IBM faces a fresh EU anti-trust complaint generated by TurboHercules (France) re IBM's supposed refusal to allow customers to run their mainframe operating system on other hardware.
* Good year-end numbers from China Telecom, Red Hat and Tibco Software.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Jabil Circuit.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Accenture and China Unicom.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Adobe, with revenue up but profit down; and Oracle, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Progress Software.
* The appointments of Gary Bloom (ex-vice-chairman of Symantec) as CEO of eMeter, a software company; Mark Duffell (ex-COO of Epicor) as president and CEO of Kana Software; and Lee Kun-hee as chairman of Samsung Electronics.
* The resignations of Cree Edwards, founder and CEO of eMeter (stays on as chairman); and Michael Fields, president and CEO of Kana Software (stays on as non-executive chairman).
* CSF Group, a Malaysian data centre company, listed on London's Aim market. This is Aim's largest technology listing for over 12 months.
* Very good IPOs on NYSE by Calix Networks, a broadband-access equipment maker, and, MaxLinear, an RF semiconductor company.
* A satisfactory IPO in Germany by Kabel Deutschland, Germany's largest cable operator.

* International:
* The privatisation of Telekom Srbija (Serbia).
* The outcome of talks between Alibaba.com and Softbank that would facilitate an e-commerce deal between China and Japan.
* The merger of Polycom and one of the other companies within the Gores Group.
* Africa:
* MTN's reaction to Bharti's move into Africa.
* South Africa:
* Further developments re Faritec and its funding.

* According to IDC, factory revenue for the HPC server market declined 11.6% in 2009 to $8.6 billion.

Novell has rejected an unsolicited bid for the company from Elliott Associates, but is putting itself up for sale.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* JSE All share index: Up 0.1% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.9% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (-33.3%), Datacentrix (-25%), Ideco (-8.9%), Mustek (-10.3%), Poynting Antennas (-43.6%), Square One (-23.1%) and TCS (+25%)

Fortune magazine has published its latest list of the 'World's Most Admired Companies'. From a technology perspective, Apple was at number one, Google at two, Microsoft at 11, IBM at 15 and Cisco at 20. Also in the top 50 were AT&T, HP, Intel, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony.

As this coming weekend is Easter, my next column will appear on Monday, 12 April, and will cover the two-week intervening period.