Convergence Partners, together with Altius Investment Holdings, takes a 40% strategic equity stake in Bloodhound Technologies, a leading South African radio frequency identification (RFID) systems and solutions provider.

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Skillpod has launched its new mobile gaming platform, Gazuma. This drive onto the mobile phone is an extension of the highly successful online casual gaming platform developed. The platform currently has 20 mobile game titles, across a number of game genres. SkillPod will be adding 12 – 18 new titles a month. All the game titles can be fully customised, re-branded, translated and have the potential to include advertisers branding in them. The platform has been setup to manage promotions in the form of advertising, sponsorship and game sales. Publishers further have the option of offering the mobile games site as a free to play, subscription based and or time based access options.

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Having attended the Mobile World Congress, the largest global telecoms conference (attended by 49,000 visitors from 200 countries) in Barcelona this year, the following 10 key trends and developments came to the fore.

The 10 major developments at MWC were:

1. Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (“GSMA”) and about 15 major operators have signed up to create an application planet where there will be a common platform that will allow application developers in the Symbian world to operate across networks and geographies (i.e. a challenge to Apple’s dominance in the apps space);
2. The affordability of smartphones are becoming a reality, with estimates that by 2015 approximately 50% of mobile phones will be smartphones. This will require larger amounts of backhaul bandwidth for the mobile networks. Once smart phones reach 70% of the market, they will be the single largest access device to the internet;
3. Mobile operators see device-to-device connectivity as the next revenue opportunity in the mobile space. These data flows are viewed as a mechanism to bolster declining voice ARPUs;
4. Green technology, especially in the data centre environment and the growth of cloud computing, is a major trend that will accelerate in the coming years;
5. The growth of smart devices on one side and sophisticated cloud computing on the other will drive growth in “intelligent pipes” in between them. This reinforces the case for increased access to fibre optic networks;
6. Here is a thought, as you go to a restaurant to have coffee or food when you pay with your credit card and you are given a receipt. Use your smartphone with high-resolution camera to take a photo of the receipt and store it or send it to your private data vault. Intelligent systems in the cloud will then collate and reconcile receipts and expense claims automatically.
7. In my view LTE is 3+ years away. No handsets are widely available. While people are talking about LTE trials, large scale deployments are still some way off, however, the hype is here. This is another reason why we need backhaul bandwidth now so that when LTE is implemented there are enough pipes to support this infrastructure;
8. Africa will continue to use mobile devices as the primary means to access the cloud;
9. Africa must develop its own applications that are specific to Africa’s needs. Including its own social network platforms that will address Africa’s unique lifestyles;
10. In conclusion, the communications ecosystem is evolving, but it is not clear which organisations will be absorbed by black holes or collide with each other to create new planets in our ecosystem. The ICT ecosystem at one level and the DNA of organisations and companies at another, will fundamentally change in the next ten years.

The Group recorded a sound trading performance for the quarter ended 31 December 2009. Reported turnover reflected an approximately 6% increase in relation to the three months to 31 December 2008.

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The first in a series of regular articles to introduce certain key executives from across the Convergence Partners investment portfolio. Richard is the chief sales, solutions and marketing officer at Plessey and tells us a little about himself and shares some of his views on the ICT landscape in South Africa.

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TechCentral, leading online technology website, has named Seacom President, Brian Herlihy as “the obvious choice” for Newsmaker of the Year for 2009. Seacom went live in July 2009 and has already resulted in dramatic price reductions and new investments in terrestrial infrastructure in East Africa.

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The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) recently announced the successful deployment of Advance Passenger Processing (APP), a border management solution, delivered by SITA Aero and Convergence Border Management Solutions, in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. APP will facilitate the arrival and departure of air travel passenger, including up to 500,000 football fans next year, enhancing security and reducing administration and turnaround costs.

South Africa joins a select group of countries that use this system to screen arrivals at their point of origin. SITA’s APP solution was first introduced in Australia in the late 1990s to handle the visitors for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and is now also used in Bahrain, Kuwait and New Zealand.

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Dimension Data once again proved its mettle across the African continent, winning the Top ICT Company in Africa Award at the 11^th African ICT Achievers Awards ceremony held on the 5^th December 2009.

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Conclusion: The African communications growth story can no longer be viewed as a frontier opportunity as more and more players from developed markets enter the African market.

Rather, the market is showing signs of greater maturity reflected by, amongst other: (i) increased competition; (ii) reducing gross margins; (iii) declining ARPUs; (iv) greater complexity of product offering and mobile payment services; (v) active attempts by incumbent mobile and fixed-line operators to expand into other parts of the value chain; and (vi) the emergence of infrastructure sharing models. While subscriber growth remains superior to other regions, with significant pent-up demand remaining, these changes in the communications landscape is forcing operators to rethink their strategies and focus on the next wave of growth.

Significantly, there have been a number of major developments that will catapult the African communications market into another league from both a cost and bandwidth perspective. These include the arrival of new international submarine fibre optic cables such as Seacom connecting the East African seaboard to international submarine fibre networks and the accelerated liberalisation of African communications markets.

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