Subscribe

Sprint races to the finish

The company's shareholders approved its merger with Softbank, and it bought the remaining shares in Clearwire.

Paul Booth
By Paul Booth
Johannesburg, 01 Jul 2013

Sprint's shareholders finally approved its deal with Softbank, and Sprint's acquisition of the remaining shares it doesn't already own in Clearwire, were the top international ICT announcements last week.

At home, MTN's failure to receive a licence in Myanmar was the main local story.

Key local news

* Very good year-end figures from Naspers, with revenue up 27.3% and profit up 93.9%.
* Excellent year-end figures from Prescient (reverse listed into PBT during the last year), with revenue up 118.9% and profit up 61.9%.
* MTN has not been successful for one of the two Myanmar licences, which were awarded to Ooredoo (Qatar) and Telenor (Norway).
* Altron and Altech announced an August de-listing date for Altech.
* John Holdsworth has applied for the liquidation of his new business, AppChat, as his legal battle with Reunert drags on.
* SAPO has launched its Trust Centre, based in Cape Town, which will provide a range of PKI products and services as well as the PKI technology itself.

Key international news

MTN has not been successful for one of the two Myanmar licences.

* Adobe acquired Neolane, the operator of a software platform for managing digital marketing campaigns, for $600 million.
* Demand Media bought Society6, an e-commerce marketplace, for $94 million.
* Hutchison Whampoa purchased O2 Ireland (Telefonica) for EUR850 million.
* Softbank (at last) acquired Sprint Nextel for $21.6 billion.
* Sprint bought the remaining shares (about 50%) it doesn't already own in Clearwire, following the withdrawal by Dish of its counter-bid. The deal was worth $7 billion.
* T-Mobile purchased wireless spectrum from US Cellular for $308 million.
* Thomas Bravo, a private equity firm, acquired Keynote Systems, a provider of Internet performance measurement and diagnostic services to e-commerce site operators, for $395 million.
* Vodafone bought Kabel Deutschland, Germany's largest cable operator, for EUR7.7 billion.
* Western Digital purchased Stec, a maker of solid state drives, for $340 million.
* HP (Autonomy) sold off its remaining stake in Blinkx, a video search engine.
* A Japanese court rejected the appeal by Apple against Samsung regarding the latter's alleged patent infringement regarding synchronising music and video data on its Galaxy smartphones and tablets with servers.
* The US ITC said Huawei, Nokia and ZTE did not infringe patents owned by InterDigital.
* Microsoft released its test version of its Windows 8.1 software.
* Good quarterly numbers from Progress Software (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Accenture and Shaw Communications.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Mitel Networks.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Synnex, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from BlackBerry.
* The appointments of Andrew Harrison as CEO of Carphone Warehouse; Lonne Jaffe (ex-CA strategy head) as CEO of Syncsort; Tod Nielsen as CEO of Heroku, VMware's PaaS offering for software developers; and Kenneth Meyers as CEO of US Cellular.
* The death of James Martin, one of the world's greatest computer scientists, who was a regular visitor to SA.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by CDW, an integrated IT solutions company.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Luxoft, the software development arm of Russia's IBS Group.

Look out for

International:
* The outcome of the talks between Samsung and the EU regarding the anti-trust case against the former.
* The outcome of Verizon's C$700 million bid for Wind Mobile (Canada).
* The buyer for Warid Telecom (Pakistan) that has been put up for sale by its owners, the Abu Dhabi Group.
Africa:
* The sell-off by Dubai Holdings Emirates of its 35% stake in Tunisie Telecom.
South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the sell-off by Telkom SA of non-core assets.
* Further developments regarding the minister of the Department of Communications as well as its DG.

Research results and predictions

* At least 60% of information workers will interact with content applications via a mobile device by 2015, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide security appliance market grew 3.4% in Q1 to just over $2 billion, according to IDC.
* The worldwide business analytics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.7% through 2017, according to IDC.
* Worldwide PC, tablet and mobile phone shipments will grow 5.9% in 2013, as anytime-anywhere computing drives buyer behaviour, according to Gartner.

Stock market changes

* JSE All share index: Up 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.4%
* Top SA share movements: Business Connexion (+7.3%), MiX Telematics (-7.9%), Muvoni (+11.1%), Poynting (-9.3%), Prescient (-7.1%), SecureData (-8.3%) and Sekunjalo (-7.3%)

Final word

Financial Mail has published its Top Companies 2013 annual. From a technology perspective, among the top 100 in the 'SA Giants' rankings are:

* 8: MTN
* 15: Vodacom
* 32: Naspers
* 33: Datatec
* 36: Telkom SA
* 44: Altron
* 49: Blue Label Telecoms
* 67: Reunert
* 72: Altech
* 98: Pinnacle Technology
* 99: Business Connexion Group

Share