Breaking up is hard to do

The international ICT market was very quiet last week ahead of the flood of quarterly results that are expected to start this week. The news of the break-up of Carlos Slim's American Movil business, and a handful of small acquisitions, were the main 'events'.

At home, it was also quiet, with HTC's re-entry into SA and EOH's ADR initiative being two of only a handful of ICT stories.

* HTC will establish a local presence once again and will work with its fulfilment partner, Brightstar.
* EOH has launched an American Depositary Receipt initiative in the US through a sponsored programme with BNY Mellon.
* Morvest Business Group has sold its 50.01% stake in Mint Management Technologies to the latter's management for R10.5 million.
* A new JSE cautionary by Poynting Holdings.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Morvest Business Group.
* The appointment of Douglas Jewson as HTC country manager for SA.

* Helios Towers bought Bharti Airtel's tower networks in four unnamed African countries for $500 million. The deal is for a total of 3 100 towers.
* The appointment of Luca Rossi as president for Acer EMEA region.

* Atmel acquired Newport Media, a maker of low-power WiFi and Bluetooth gear, for $140 million.
* EMC purchased TwinStrata, a provider of a storage appliance and CloudArray software.
* Marlin Equity Partners bought CA Technologies' arcserve data protection business.
* Microsoft acquired InMage, a business continuity service that helps enterprises migrate their data between public and private clouds.
* Teleperformance (France) purchased Aegis' BPO businesses in Costa Rica, the Philippines and the US, for $610 million.
* TeliaSonera bought the Norwegian business of Tele2, the country's third largest mobile operator, for $740 million.
* Top Image Systems acquired eGistics, a US-based software and solutions company.
* Yahoo purchased RayV, a video streaming start-up.
* Chad Hurley, former CEO and co-founder of YouTube, invested in Rightster, an online video distribution network.
* Apple lost a patent case in China regarding the validity of a patent held by a Chinese company.
* Vringo filed another patent lawsuit against ZTE, this time for Romania.
* A German court said Motorola infringes an antenna patent owned by LPKF Laser & Electronics and must stop selling mobile phones in that country.
* Gowex, a Spanish municipal WiFi provider, has filed for bankruptcy.
* IBM has earmarked $3 billion for chip research and development in the next five years.
* Carlos Slim will break up the Am'erica M'ovil empire he has built up in Mexico in order to bring his shareholding below the 50% mark and avoid the group being classed as the dominant group in the market, and thus subject to onerous new rules.
* Good quarterly numbers from Infosys.
* Quarterly losses from Box.
* The resignation of Jenaro Garcia, founder and CEO of Gowex.
* An IPO filing from Yodle, an online advertising company.

South Africa:
* The local security appliances market declined 17.1% in value in Q1, according to IDC.

EMEA/Africa:
* Integrated infrastructure and platforms revenue in the EMEA region grew 57% in Q1, according to IDC.

HTC will establish a local presence once again.

Worldwide:
* DisplaySearch's forecast for tablet shipments in 2014 has been lowered to 285 million units, following a decline in Q1 shipments to 56 million. In addition, it expects the 2014 growth rate of tablets will fall to just 14%, and by 2017 will slow to single digits.
* Worldwide traditional PC, tablet, ultramobiles and mobile phone shipments are set to grow 4.2% in 2014 to 2.4 billion units, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide PC shipments experienced flat growth in Q2, with the top three players, Lenovo, HP and Dell, all increasing their market share, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide semiconductor capital equipment spending is projected to increase 15% in 2014 to $38.5 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide semiconductor sales are on pace to total $336 billion in 2014, up 6.7% from 2013, according to Gartner.
* Tablets will outsell PCs by 2015, according to Gartner.
* Total revenue from mobile media and advertising will pass $90 billion in 2018, up from $53 billion in 2014, according to IHS Technology.
* Public cloud services spending reached $45.7 billion in 2013, and is expected to grow through 2018 at a CAGR of 23%, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.7%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.7%
* S&P 500: Down 0.9%
* FTSE100: Down 2.6%
* Top SA share movements: CompuClearing (-11.8%), Gijima (-11.9%), Jasco (+11.6%), MICROmega Holdings (+9.5%), Sekunjalo (+11.1%) and Silverbridge Holdings (-7.8%)

International:
* The Alibaba IPO on 8 August.

South Africa:
* The acquisition by Poynting Holdings of Poynting Europe.

Barron's has released its annual listing of the world's most respected companies. From a technology perspective, the following were included:

1: Apple (was number two last year)
4: Google
7: Amazon (was number six)
21: Intel (was 20)
38: Qualcomm (was 43)
39: Samsung Electronics (was 18)
52: IBM (was 10 in 2013 and two in 2012)
55: Cisco (was 47)
56: SAP (was 42)
58: Oracle (was 55)
62: Microsoft (was 61)
64: Deutsche Telekom (a new entrant)
65: Vodafone (was 64)
71: Verizon Communications (was 57)
72: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (was 65)
73: Softbank (a new entrant)
78: Comcast (was 60)
79: AT&T (was 78)
83: Facebook (a new entrant)
96: China Mobile (was 95)
97: Tencent (a new entrant)

It's interesting to note that Accenture, EMC, HP, Ingram Micro and Xerox are some of the leading technology companies not included in the top 100.