Google gains mobility

The key international ICT stories from the past three weeks include Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility - a move that puts substantial pressure on Nokia and RIM; and the various activities regarding HP, including its acquisition of Autonomy and its possible exit from the PC game.

At home, it's been relatively quiet, with no 'earth-shattering' news.

Windows 7 will run on 42% of PCs in use worldwide by the end of 2011.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Good year-end numbers from Morvest Business Group, with revenue up 16% and back in the black.
* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Dimension Data, with revenue up 4.7% and profit up over 10%.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from MTN, with revenue up 1% but profit up 16%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Cell C, with revenue up 5% and EBITDA almost unchanged. Subscriber numbers were also up 12% to 8.2 million.
* Positive trading updates from Mustek and PBT Group.
* Negative trading updates from Gijima and SecureData.
* Altron (Bytes Technology Group) acquired UK-based Security Partnerships, a security specialist, for R72 million.
* PwC bought the leading technology law firm, Chetty Law.
* Squirewood Investments purchased Ifca Software for R1 000. This is the only IT operating unit of Ifca Technologies, and will see the latter move out of IT.
* Promon SA made an additional 10% investment in Promon Logicalis Latin America (PLLAL), the partnership that Datatec's Logicalis has with Promon SA in Latin America, thus raising its stake to 40%.
* OnedotCom, the merger between BCS NET and DNS Telecom, was unveiled. The company is ultimately owned by Blue Platinum Ventures and headed by Niel de Wet.
* The appointments of Siegmar Proebstl as CEO of Siemens Southern Africa; Idris Suleman as CEO of HR-Focus; and Ashley Tugendhaft as interim chairman of Pinnacle Technology.
* The retirements of Chris du Plessis, CEO of HR-Focus; and Chris Kruger, ex-chairman and CEO of African Cellular Towers.
* The death of Cyril Biddlecombe, chairman of Pinnacle Technology.

* Satisfactory half-year numbers from Orascom Telecom, with revenue up 4.3% and profit significantly up.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Airtel International, with revenue up but profit down; and Telecom Egypt, with revenue up but profit down.
* iWay Africa, which is owned by Telkom SA, bought Uganda's Afsat Communications.
* IHS Nigeria acquired the Nigerian towers of Visafone Communications.
* The Moroccan government is looking to sell 7% of its stake in Maroc Telecom, thus reducing its stake to 23%. Vivendi holds a 53% shareholding.
* MTN is to set up a new operation in South Sudan, following the country's newly acquired independence.
* The Nigerian government has granted the Bureau of Public Enterprises approval for a negotiated sale of Nitel.

* Am'erica M'ovil purchased the remaining shares (40%) of Telmex (Mexico) it doesn't already own, including the stake held by AT&T. The deal was worth $6.5 billion.

* Arrow Electronics acquired Chip One Stop, a Japanese electronic components supplier.

* Blackstone Group, a private equity organisation, bought Emdeon, a healthcare payment services company, for $3 billion.

* Citrix Systems purchased RingCube, a leader in user personalisation technology for virtual desktops.

* DST Systems (its UK subsidiary Innovative Output Solutions) bought UK-based Lateral Systems, a marketing and printing company. This is DST's sixth acquisition in the last three months.

* F5 Networks acquired the IP assets of Crescendo Networks.

* Facebook purchased Push Pop Press, an e-book publisher.

* Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in a deal that escalates the search company's rivalry with Apple and gives it control over more wireless patents. It is also Google's largest acquisition to date.

* Google also purchased Dealmap, a start-up that aggregates up to 400 000 local and daily deals a day.

* Google acquired several patents from IBM, including some regarding the fabrication of microprocessor chips and the architecture of online search engines.

* HP bought Autonomy, one of the UK's largest software companies, for $11.7 billion.

* HTC purchased Beat Electronics, a company that makes high-end headphones and speakers, for $309 million (51%).

* HTC acquired Dashwire, a mobile services provider, for $18.5 million.

* Nuance Communications bought Loquendo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia.

* SGI purchased OpenCFD, an open source computational fluid dynamics software player.

* Sony acquired Sucker Punch Productions, a game developer and long-time partner of Sony Computer Entertainment.

* Twitter bought Bagcheck for an undisclosed price. The service allows users to create, discover and share lists.

* Windstream Communications purchased Paetec in a move that is intended to expand its business and broadband services. The deal was worth $891 million in stock.

* Baidu made a 40% investment in Fanshu.com, an online book store.

* NTT DoCoMo made a 25% investment in Vietnam's largest mobile content provider, VMG Media Joint Stock Company, which owns a market share of roughly 25% in that country.

* Vodafone has sold a 5.5% stake in its Indian subsidiary, Vodafone Essar, to India's Piramal Healthcare, for approximately US$640 million.

* Excellent quarterly results from MEMC Electronic Materials.

* Very good quarterly figures from Sapient and Tencent Holdings.

* Good half-year figures from Huawei Technologies.

* Good year-end numbers from Alibaba.com, Inmarsat, Nuance Communications (back in the black) and Nvidia (back in the black).

* Good quarterly numbers from American Tower, Autodesk, BCE, CACI International, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Dish Network, Gartner, Lenovo, Open Text and Tech Data.

* Satisfactory quarterly results from Analog Devices, Convergys, CSC, Dell, HP, LinkedIn, MetroPCS, NTT, Pitney Bowes, Plantronics, Software AG and Vishay Intertechnology.

* Satisfactory half-year figures from China Mobile.

* Mediocre quarterly results from Brocade Communications Systems, Deutsche Telekom, Garmin, Reliance Communications and United Microelectronics.

* Mediocre half-year numbers from Blue Coat Systems and Logica.

* Mixed quarterly figures from Bharti Airtel, with revenue up but profit down; CenturyLink, with revenue up but profit down; Cisco, with revenue up but profit down; MicroStrategy, with revenue up but profit well down; NetApp, with revenue up but profit down; Zain, with revenue up but profit down; and ZTE, with revenue up but profit down.

* Quarterly losses from AOL, Clearwire, Leap Wireless, Limelight Networks, MTNL (India), Salesforce.com and SMIC.

* A half-year loss from Telecom Italia.

* The appointments of Steve Bennett as chairman of Symantec; Gregory Clark as president and CEO of Blue Coat Systems; Dave Hansen as CEO of Numara Software; Keith Krach as CEO of DocuSign; Mark McLaughlin as CEO of Palo Alto Networks; Erik Prusch as president and CEO of Clearwire; and Chiu Tzu-yu as CEO of SMIC.

* The resignations of Michael Borman, president and CEO of Blue Coat Systems; and John Thompson, chairman of Symantec.

* The delay in the IPO filings of Portuguese mobile marketing and payment services provider TIM w.e. SGPS SA, which was expected to raise $146.3 million; and 3D motion-sensing company InvenSense, due to raise $99.8 million, as a direct result of the current turmoil on the financial markets.

* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Tudou, a Chinese streaming video Web site, a deal that values the company at a little over $3 billion.

International:
* The acquisition by a private equity group of Oberthur Group's Card Systems and Identity divisions.
* The acquisition of MYOB (Australia) by Sage (UK).
* The spin-off by HP of its PC unit.
* The winner in the fight for InterDigital, the wireless communications specialist. Possible contenders include Apple, Nokia and Qualcomm.

South Africa:
* The new CEO at Cell C.

* Worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion in 2011 as mobile data services revenue totals $314.7 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide Q2 PC microprocessor shipments were down 2.9%, according to IDC.
* Windows 7 will run on 42% of PCs in use worldwide by the end of 2011, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide sales of mobile devices in Q2 of 2011 grew 16.5%, with smartphone sales growing 74%, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 5.9% (lowest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Down 15% (lowest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-13.3%), African Cellular Towers (-15.7%), Blue Label Telecoms (-11.3%), Dialogue Group (-15.4%), FoneWorx (+24.1%), Ifca Technologies (+200%), Poynting Antennas (-16.7%), Stella Vista (-33.3%), TCS (-33.3%) and TeleMasters (-18.7%)

As indicated in my column earlier this month, the following additional and interesting analysis is from the latest Fortune 500 Global listing.

* New arrivals and returns include Lenovo Group (449), LG Display (439), LG Electronics (171), Research in Motion (489), Wistron (499) and Xerox (448).
* Exits include Asustek Computer, Royal KPN, Sanyo Electric and Time Warner Cable.
* The top 50 revenue growth companies includes Amazon.com, America Movil, Apple, China Electronics, Hon Hai Precision Industries, LG Display, Quanta Computer and Xerox.