Apple gets moving with Beats

Apple's long-awaited takeover of Beats, Softbank's proposed purchase of T-Mobile, and Atos' buyout of Bull, dominated the international ICT scene last week.

At home, the new ministerial appointments that weren't well received by the industry, and Altron's purchase of Nashua's Cell C subscriber base, stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Mixed full-year figures from Huge Group, with revenue down 23.5% but back in the black.
* A full-year loss from Ansys, with revenue down 19.1%.
* Positive trading updates from MTN Group and Telkom SA.
* Negative trading updates from ConvergeNet Holdings and MTN SA.
* Altron (Autopage) acquired Nashua Mobile's Cell C subscriber base for R91.5 million.
* FoneWorx made an investment (44%) in Living Facts, a provider of specialist analytics, data processing and statistical services.
* T-Systems, The Innovation Hub and Maxum Business Incubator launched the Innovation Factory in SA.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Morvest Business Group.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Reunert.
* The appointments of Siyabonga Cwele as the new minister of the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services; Lionel Isaac as chairman of CompuClearing; and Faith Muthambi as the new minister of the Department of Communications, which includes responsibility for ICASA and the SABC.
* The resignations of Johan Du Preez as CEO of CompuClearing (but stays on the board); and Arnold Garber, executive chairman of CompuClearing (stays on as CEO).

* Orange has launched its third start-up incubator, CIPMEN, in Niger.
* Gilat Satcom has opened its POP in Tanzania.
* Mark Walker was named IDC's regional director for Africa.

Altron (Autopage) acquired Nashua Mobile's Cell C subscriber base for R91.5 million.

* Apple bought Beats, a music streaming and audio equipment company, for $3 billion.
* Atos purchased Bull, a provider of cloud, cyber security and big data to its enterprise customers, for EUR620 million. Bull, once owned by the French government, was the main French IT company of the 1960s and 1970s.
* Intuit acquired Check, a bill-payment service provider, for $360 million.
* Seagate Technology bought LSI's flash business that is now owned by Avago Technologies, for $450 million.
* Softbank purchased T-Mobile, the US's fourth largest mobile carrier, in a move that will still see Deutsche Telekom retain a minority stake in the latter (it currently owns 67%). The deal could be worth almost $50 billion.
* Synaptics acquired (55%) the LCD business of Renesas (Japan), the sole supplier of display driver chips for Apple's iPhone.
* Vasco Data Security bought Risk IDS, a provider of risk-based authentication solutions.
* Vubiquity purchased FilmFlex Movies from the joint venture owned by Disney and Sony.
* Alibaba made a $249 million investment in Singapore Post.
* Foxconn Technology Group (Hon Hai Precision Industry) made a $390 million investment in Asia Pacific Telecom, a Taiwanese mobile operator.
* Palo Alto Networks will pay $175 million to resolve its patent dispute with Juniper Networks.
* Very good quarterly figures from Avago Technologies.
* Good quarterly numbers from Descartes Systems Group.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Rostelecom.
* Mixed quarterly figures from OmniVision Technologies, with revenue down but profit up; and Tech Data, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Infoblox, Nimble Storage, Palo Alto Networks, QAD, Splunk and Workday.
* The appointment of Philip Galati as CEO of Trillium Software.
* The resignations of BG Srinivas, president of Infosys, and Robert Thomas, CEO of Infoblox.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Resonant, a development-stage company creating innovative filter designs for radio frequency.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide server shipments grew 1.4% in Q1, although revenue declined 4.1%, according to Gartner. HP extended its lead over IBM, with Dell closing in on it. Fujitsu lost its number four slot to Cisco.
* Seventy-five percent of mobile security breaches will be the result of mobile application misconfiguration, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide threat intelligence security services spending is expected to exceed $1.4 billion by 2018, according to IDC.
* Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.2 billion this year, up from the 1 billion shipped in 2013, according to IDC.
* The worldwide WLAN market grew 7% in Q1, with the EMEA region growing 12.1%, according to IDC.
* Worldwide tablet shipments will now only be 245.4 million units, down from its previous estimate of 260.9 million units, according to IDC.
* The worldwide video conferencing and telepresence equipment market declined 20% in Q1, according to IDC.
* Worldwide PC shipment volumes will reach 293 million units in 2014, down 2.1% from 2013, according to MIC (Taipei).

* JSE All share index: Down 0.6%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.7% (highest weekend close this year)
* S&P 500: Up 1.2% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-13.3%), Gijima (+8.3%), Jasco (-10.1%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+8%) and Sekunjalo (+17.3%)

International:
* An investment by Alibaba in AppNexus, a New York online advertising company.

South Africa:
* Further developments on the consolidation of the local telecommunications sector.

Forbes has recently published its 2014 Global 2000 listing based on four metrics: sales, profit, assets and market value. This is my second set of observations on the list:
* Acer at number 1 946, down from number 1 822.
* Alcatel-Lucent at 838, up from 1 138.
* America Movil at 115, down from 100 and the highest Mexican company in the list.
* BT Group at 218, up from 221.
* Deutsche Telekom at 145, down from 133 and 10 in the list of German companies.
* Facebook at 510, up from 1 071.
* Hon Hai Precision Industry at 139, down from 113 but still the highest Taiwanese company in the list.
* HP at 80, up from 438.
* Liberty Media at 650, up from 1 090.
* LinkedIn at 1 701, up from 1 736.
* Millicom International at 1 782, down from 1 405.
* Nokia at 631, up from 689.
* NTT at 61, down from 46 and the fourth highest Japanese company in the list.
* Orange at 144, up from 169 and number nine in the list of French companies.
* Salesforce.com at 1 523, up from 1 654.
* SAP at 207, up from 211.
* Taiwan Semiconductor at 190, up from 227 and the second highest Taiwanese company in the list.
* Telefonica at 68, down from 62 and the second highest Spanish company in the list.
* Teradata at 1 983, down from 1 584.
* Twitter in at 1 645.