Vodafone gets rid of Softbank assets

Vodafone's disposal of its interests in Softbank was the main international ICT story last week.

At home, we saw the first media briefing by the new communications minister, alongside various outputs from AfricaCom, Africa's largest ICT event, held in Cape Town.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Vodacom, with revenue up 3% but profit more than last year's full-year figures.
* Mixed year-end figures from Business Connexion, with revenue down 26% but profit up almost 40%.
* Mediocre Q1 numbers from Net 1 UEPS, with revenue down 2% but profit down 59%.
* A positive trading update from UCS.
* Negative trading updates from African Cellular Towers and Telkom SA.
* Labat Africa's deal with Aurora Empowerment Systems involving the disposal of Sames has fallen through, and as a result, the purchase of various operations of Primrose Gold Mines has been cancelled.
* A 'clarification' announcement was made regarding FibreCo Telecommunications, the country's newest fibre-optic network firm jointly owned by Cell C, Convergence Partners and Internet Solutions, and into which R5 billion has been invested. It seems the initial phase will see the roll-out of 4 500km of a redundant core ring that will link Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban to international cable landing stations within two years.
* The dispute has been resolved between the Kelly Group and Mthunzi Mdwaba, its former deputy CEO and the owner of Torque IT, a company that was bought by the Kelly Group in October 2008.
* Andy Baker was appointed CEO of Nashua Mobile.
* Quraysh Patel resigned as chairman of Sentech.
* Mark Levy, joint-CEO of Blue Label Telecoms, was named the IT Personality of the Year 2010; and Patrick Monyeki, a director of De Beers Group Services Board, was named this year's Visionary CIO.

* Satisfactory quarterly numbers from Orascom Telecom, with revenue up 1.6% but profit up 130%. Its subscriber base is now over 103 million.
* Mediocre quarterly numbers from Telecom Egypt, with retail revenue down 11.2% and profit down 7.3%.
* Good nine-month profit figures from Egypt's Raya Holding for Technology and Communications, with a rise of 15%.
* Good half-year figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 15.9% and profit up 12.9%.
* The Nigerian IT company, Computer Warehouse Group, established a regional hub based in Uganda that will serve Kenya, Rwanda, Southern Sudan and Uganda.
* Mozambique's third mobile licence has been awarded to Movitel, a consortium that includes Viettel, the Vietnamese telecommunications operator.
* Nigeria's Bureau for Public Enterprises said the consortium that won the bid for Nitel has been given 20 more days to pay the $750 million deposit.

The initial phase will see the roll-out of 4 500km of a redundant core ring that will link Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban to international cable landing stations within two years.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Accenture acquired Mogenesis, a Chinese software company that provides mobile software outsourcing services.
* EMC purchased Bus-Tech, a storage virtualisation company.
* SoftBank bought Vodafone's remaining interests in that company for £3.1 billion.
* Nokia is taking back control of the Symbian operating system from April 2011, with the cross-industry Symbian Foundation taking care of the licensing of the software going forward.
* Excellent quarterly results from Tencent Holdings (Naspers is the major shareholder).
* Very good quarterly figures from Alibaba.com and Lenovo.
* Good quarterly numbers from Inmarsat.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Cisco, NTT, Swisscom, Telefonica and Toshiba.
* Mediocre quarterly results from BT Group, CSC and Nvidia.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Bharti Airtel, with revenue up but profit down; CDC Software, with revenue up but profit down; Convergys, with revenue down but profit up; and Singapore Tel, with revenue up but profit down.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Inphi, a chip designer.

* International:
* A possible acquisition of Groupon by Yahoo. Naspers has a share in Groupon indirectly via DST.
* Africa:
* The opening of a new business in Kenya by Business Connexion.
* South Africa:
* The formal launch of the state-owned fibre operator Broadband Infraco.
* Further information regarding a new Labat Africa deal with Aurora.
* Further developments regarding Computerlinks Africa, a security distributor. It is rumoured the company has gone out of business in South Africa.

* Worldwide PC microprocessor shipments and revenue grew 2.1% and 2.5% respectively in Q3, reports IDC.
* Mobile users in Africa topped 500 million in Q3, 10% of the global total, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.
* Worldwide mobile phone sales grew 35% in Q3, while smartphone sales increased 96%, reports Gartner.
* Samsung became the largest Android manufacturer in Q3, usurping HTC for this honour, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.8% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Down 2.4%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-14.8%), Ansys (+15.4%), Dialogue Group (+8.3%), Labat Africa (+7.1%), Net UEPS (-7%), Pinnacle Technology (+9.3%), Poynting Antennas (+10%), Stella Vista (-16.7%), TeleMasters (+28.8%) and UCS (-7.7%)

Fortune magazine recently published its '40 under 40', its hottest young business leaders list. Included, from a technology perspective, were Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, at number one; Mark Zuckenberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, at number two; Biz Stone and Evan Williams, co-founders of Twitter, at three; Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, at five; and Pony Ma Huateng, founder and president of Tencent, at seven.

I am currently away in Europe on business. My next column will appear on 29 November and will cover the two-week intervening period.