Will Elpida be just a memory?

Elpida Memory's filing for bankruptcy protection stole the headlines in the international ICT market this week.

At home, Business Connexion's newly formed partnership with US-based Mendix was a highlight of the week.

Look out for developments regarding Korea Telecom's possible 20% investment in Telkom SA.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners.

* Good interim figures from Poynting Antennas, with revenue up 15% and back in the black.
* Satisfactory interim figures from FoneWorx, with revenue up 13.9% and profit up 9.2%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Mustek, with revenue up 21% but profit down 44%; and Silverbridge Holdings, with revenues down 9% but profit up 4%.
* Positive trading updates from CompuClearing, EOH, MICROmega, MTN and Pinnacle Technology.
* A negative trading update from ConvergeNet Holdings.
* Bidvest's subsidiary BB Investment Company made an additional investment in Mvelaserve, thus raising its stake to 5.16%.
* Jabster Technologies launched in SA. It will focus on the distribution of Jabra products, and will be headed by Pete de Lange.
* Intelsat and content management company GlobeCast launched the Intelsat New Dawn Ku-band Multi-Channel Per Carrier media platform for Africa.
* Business Connexion has formed a partnership with US-based Mendix, a player in the PaaS (platform as a service) market.
* The appointments of Clive Brindley as HP SA's software country manager; and Rowena Majiedt as chairman of Labat Africa.
* Debbie Zwane-Chikura resigned as COO of Gijima.

* Mediocre year-end figures from Maroc Telecom, a subsidiary of Vivendi, with revenue down 3.4% and EBITDA down 10%.
* Nigeria's government is to liquidate Nitel and Mtel, the state-run telecommunications companies.
* US-based Scorto, a provider of decision management and risk mitigation solutions and services, has opened a local office in Nairobi.
* Jeremy Butt has been appointed as Weston's EMEA operations VP.

* Arrow Electronics acquired Asset Recovery Corporation, a provider of electronics asset disposition services.
* DigitalOptics, a subsidiary of Tessera Technologies, bought Flextronics' Vista Point Technologies camera module business.
* Dropbox purchased Cove, a collaboration and communications product and a start-up founded by three ex-Facebook engineers.
* Shutterfly acquired Kodak's online photo services business for $23.8 million.
* Elpida Memory, Japan's last memory-chip-maker, has filed for bankruptcy protection.
* Sprint Nextel has abandoned its possible interest in an $8 billion takeover of MetroPCS Communications.

* Mediocre quarterly results from Cray, Tech Data and TomTom.
* Mediocre full-year numbers from SFR (France), a subsidiary of Vivendi.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Cablevision Systems, with revenue up but profit down; and Sykes Enterprises, with revenue down but back in the black.
* The appointments of Kazuhiro Tsuga as president of Panasonic; and Sunil Sood as COO of Vodafone India.
* Sanjiv Ahuja resigned as CEO of LightSquared.
* The planned retirement of Frederick Hume, CEO of Data I/O, sometime later this year.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Yelp, an online consumer brand.

* International:
* A possible bid by Tata Group for Cable & Wireless Worldwide, thus pitting itself against a possible rival bid from Vodafone.
* The possible investment by Turkcell in Vivacom, a Bulgarian telecommunications operator.
* South Africa:
* Developments regarding Korea Telecom's possible 20% investment in Telkom SA. The former is currently undertaking a due diligence.

* Seventy-five percent of organisations with BCM programmes will have public social media services in their crisis communications strategies by 2015, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide server market declined 7.2% in Q4 2011 to $14.2 billion, according to IDC, although for the whole of 2011, the market grew 5.8% to $52.3 billion, with IBM regaining the number one slot.
* The worldwide external disk storage market went up 7.7% in Q4 2011 to reach almost $6.6 billion, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.2%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.4% (highest weekend close for over 10 years)
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-20%), Ansys (-12.3%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-14.3%), FoneWorx (+23.9%), Ideco (-20%), Labat Africa (-16.7%), MiX Telematics (+8.7%), Poynting Antennas (+17.1%) and Sekunjalo (+7.9%)

Forbes Africa recently published its “Top 20 Tech Start-Up Companies in Africa”. They include:

* 1. MXit (SA), a free online mobile instant messaging service and a company recently acquired by World of Avatar, which is run by Alan Knott-Craig Jnr.
* 2. Yola (SA), a company that offers small businesses Web site building and hosting services to display their products and services.
* 3. Dropifi (Ghana), a messaging service that provides businesses with tools to help build relationships with customers and to analyse contact information.
* 5. FloCash (London), a provider of a Pan-African online payment platform.
* 7. Bandeka (Nigeria/Ghana), an 'invite-only' community where well-educated Africans around the world can meet, connect and build lasting relationships.

Other countries providing entries into this top 20 include Cameroon, Kenya and Tanzania.

I am currently overseas on business, and as a consequence my next column will appear on Monday 19 March, but will fully cover the intervening two weeks.