Piracy fight turns the corner

Microsoft's $8.5 billion takeover of Skype stole the international ICT headlines last week.

At home, it was another quiet week, with the main news being the financial results from Datatec and Paracon.

* Good interim numbers from Paracon, with revenue up 22% and profit up 23%.
* Good year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue up 15% and profit up 45%.
* Negative trading updates from African Cellular Towers, Ansys, Ideco and UCS.
* SA's fight against piracy is making progress, despite a doubling of the size of the PC market in 2010, according to the Business Software Alliance 2010 Global Software Piracy study.
* The final liquidation order for Beget Holdings has been granted.

* Mixed quarterly figures from Maroc Telecom, with revenue up 1% but profit down 7.2%.
* HP will open an office in Tanzania.
* The WACS undersea cable has reached Ghana.

Forrester Research purchased Springboard Research, a provider of research and advisory services focused on Asia Pacific and emerging markets.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Avos acquired Tap11.com, a social media analytics firm. Avos, formed by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, also recently bought Delicious, a social bookmarking service, from Yahoo.
* Forrester Research purchased Springboard Research, a provider of research and advisory services focused on Asia Pacific and emerging markets.
* Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, the software giant's largest-ever takeover deal.
* Nuance's $157 million acquisition of Equitrac, which offers print management and cost recovery software.
* Nvidia $367 million purchase of Icera, a cellphone chipmaker, stepping up its competition against Qualcomm.
* Chip designer Rambus snapped up Cryptography Research, a security technology company, in a $342.5 million deal.
* The acquisition by Xerox (Global Imaging Systems) of Midwest Business Solutions, an independent distributor of copiers, printers and multifunction systems.
* The majority stake investment by Wipro in a Brazilian manufacturing company, in a deal that strengthens its infrastructure engineering division.
* Excellent quarterly results from Tencent Holdings (Naspers is a major shareholder in Tencent).
* Very good quarterly figures from Alibaba.com.
* Good quarterly numbers from Nuance Communications (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from BCE, CA, Softbank and Trend Micro.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Hitachi (back in the black) and Toshiba (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Atos Origin, Nvidia and Telefonica.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Cisco, with revenue up but profit down; NTT, with revenue up but profit down; and Symantec, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end figures from BT, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Elpida Memory and Zoran.
* A year-end loss from NEC, with revenue also down.
* The appointments of Simon Israel as chairman of Singapore Telecommunications, and Robert Young as CEO of Terrera.
* The resignations of Chumpol NaLamlieng, chairman of Singapore Telecommunications; and Henry Nothhaft, CEO of Tessera.
* Planned IPOs from LinkedIn (NYSE) and Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE), with shares expected to start trading on 19 and 26 May respectively.
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq from Yandex, a Russian search giant, which is seeking to raise $1.15 billion. Its shares are expected to start trading on 24 May.

* International:
* The buyer for CA's Internet security business.

* South Africa:
* Further developments following the recent Business Connexion/UCS deal that could involve the sale of one of the parties involved.

* According to a Gartner survey, digital text consumption nearly equals the time spent reading printed paper text.
* The Zimbabwean telecommunications industry is set for significant growth during the next few years, reaching $1.34 billion by 2016 from a level of $372.2 million in 2009, says Frost & Sullivan.
* The enterprise software market grew 8.5% in 2010 to reach $245 billion, reports Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Flat
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+15.4%), Ansys (-12.8%), ConvergeNet Holdings (+13%), FoneWorx (+13.7%), Huge Group (-15.4%), IFCA Technologies (-22.2%), Labat Africa (+16.7%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+13.5%), Pinnacle Technology (+13.8%) and UCS (-79.5%)

Fortune Magazine has published its listing of Asia's 25 most powerful executives. From a technology perspective, Ku-Hee lee, chairman and CEO of Samsung Group, was at number four; Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei Technologies, was at five; Terry Gou, chairman and CEO of Foxconn Technology Group, at six; and Wang Xiaochu, chairman and CEO of China Mobile, at eight.

Also, BrandZ's top 100 ranking of the world's most valuable global brands, compiled by Millward Brown, has been published. Apple came in at number one, with AT&T (number seven), China Mobile (nine), Google (two), IBM (three) and Microsoft (five) all in the top 10 as well. Newcomers to the top 100 included China Telecom (91), Deutsche Telekom (19), Facebook (35), Telecom Italia (75) and Tencent Holdings (52).