Google gets a Twitch

Apart from a flood of quarterly results that included great numbers from Baidu and Facebook, the acquisitions by Google and Yahoo were the main international ICT stories last week.

At home, the update from Vodacom was the main local news in a very quiet week.

* Mixed year-end figures from Ellies, with revenue up 5.5% but profit down 68.3%.
* A positive trading update from Vodacom Group, with revenue for the June quarter up 4.3% and active customer numbers up 15.6% to 59.6 million.
* SITA will now report to the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services and not the Department of Communications.
* Samsung is establishing a manufacturing facility in KwaZulu-Natal.
* MTN has won two awards for the strongest brand and most valuable brand in the 2014 Brand Finance Awards.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Telkom SA.
* The appointment of Wellington Matope as president of the IITPSA.
* The departures of Rabelani Dagada, president of the IITPSA; and Frank van Rees, SA country manager for HP to HP EMEA.

* Satisfactory half-year numbers from Sonatel (Senegal), with revenue up 11.7% and profit up 6.6%.
* Niger has awarded a 3G licence to Celtel, a mobile operator run by Bharti Airtel.
* ICT spending in Kenya has grown from 8.9% of GDP in 2006 to 12.1% in 2013.
* Orange will co-finance the construction of a high-speed submarine cable connecting France to Singapore via Djibouti and Egypt.

Other notable changes are the entries of Nokia, Sony and Telecom Italia into the 'top 30 money losers' list.

* Dassault Systemes acquired Quintiq, a business planning software company, for EUR250 million.
* EFI bought DirectSmile, a maker of media personalisation and automation software.
* Google purchased Twitch, a game live-streaming company, for $1 billion.
* LinkedIn acquired Bizo, a business audience marketing provider.
* Monolithic Power Systems bought Switzerland-based Sensima Technology SA, a developer of magnetic sensors.
* Newport purchased V-Gen, a fibre laser developer and manufacturer.
* Teradata acquired the assets of Hadapt and Revelytix, in a move designed to grow out its capabilities for the Hadoop big-data processing framework. Hadapt is known for its software that integrates SQL with Hadoop, and Revelytix developed Loom, a metadata management system compatible with a number of Hadoop distributions, including Apache, Cloudera, HortonWorks and Pivotal.
* Yahoo bought Flurry, an analytics start-up.
* BCE (Canada) made an additional $3.68 billion investment in Bell Aliant, in a move that will take the latter private.
* Avago's LSI and Seagate Technology have been found not to violate Realtek Semiconductor's patented technology.
* Bose is suing Beats Electronics over patents used in noise-cancelling technology.
* Excellent quarterly results from Facebook.
* Very good quarterly figures from Baidu, Etisalat, Netflix, Rambus (back in the black), TriQuint Semiconductor (back in the black) and Vasco Data Security.
* Good quarterly numbers from Altera, Amphenol, ARM Holdings, ASM International (back in the black), Electronic Arts, F5 Networks, Flextronics, Idea Cellular (India), Infinera (back in the black), Informatica, Juniper Networks (profit more than doubled), Linear Technology Manhattan Associates, Teradyne, Tessco Technologies and Wipro.
* Good half-year figures from Huawei.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from America Movil, Apple, Bharti Infratel, Cadence Design Systems, Check Point Software Technologies, Comcast, Datalink, DST Systems, Equifax, Fair Isaac, LG Electronics, Logitech International, Qlogic (back in the black), Qualcomm, RF Micro Devices, Riverbed Technology (back in the black), Sanmina, Saudi Telecom (although profit up nearly 100%), TE Connectivity, Texas Instruments, VeriSign, VMware, Vodafone Group, and Xilinx.
* Mediocre quarterly results from CA Technologies, Cirrus Logic, Lockheed Martin's IS&GS unit, Pandora Media, Rogers Communications, STMicroelectronics (but back in the black) and Xerox.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AT&T, with revenue up but profit down; Celestica, with revenue up but profit down; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Canon, with revenue down but profit up; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; Fortinet, with revenue up but profit down; Ingram Micro, with revenue up but profit down; KLA-Tencor, with revenue up but profit down; Lattice Semiconductor, with revenue up but profit down; Lexmark, with revenue up but profit down; Maxim Integrated Products, with revenue up but profit down; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; Netgear, with revenue down but profit up; Nokia, with revenue down but back in the black; Polycom, with revenue down but profit up; and Verizon Communications, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed half-year figures from EE, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Amazon.com, Broadcom (revenue also down), Mellanox Technologies, NetSuite, Quantum, Qlik Technologies, SBA Communications and Unisys (revenue also down).
* The appointment of Marty Beard as COO of BlackBerry.
* The resignation of David Sacks, co-founder of Yammer, a company that was acquired by Microsoft in 2012.
* A planned IPO in Germany from Germany's Rocket Internet, a company that establishes e-commerce start-ups.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to Frost & Sullivan, combined revenue from the telecoms sectors in the DRC and Ethiopia are expected to more than double to $3.27 billion by 2018.
* According to Pyramid Research, Kenya's telecommunications services market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.2% over the 2013 to 2018 period.

Worldwide:
* Global notebook shipments to grow 4.3% sequentially in Q3, but will take a 1.1% dive in Q4, according to Digitimes Research.
* Global tablet shipments reached 55.06 million units in Q2, up 17.9% on the previous year, according to Digitimes Research.
* Supply chain software revenue is on course to reach $10 billion in 2014, up 12% from 2013, according to Gartner.
* Lenovo tablet shipments in Q2 placed it in the number three slot (was number five), ahead of Acer and Asustek, but well behind Apple and Samsung, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.8%
* S&P 500: No change
* FTSE100: Up 0.7%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-10.6%), CompuClearing (+8.5%), ConvergeNet Holdings (+26.4%), Ellies (-19.4%), Gijima (-13.8%), Jasco (+7.5%), Prescient (+8.2%) and Telemasters (+35.3%)

International:
* A possible bid for EMC, maybe from Oracle.
* The acquisition by AT&T and the Chernin Group of Fullscreen, a YouTube video network.

South Africa:
* The new country manager for HP.

Fortune magazine recently released its 2014 Global 500 listing. From a technology perspective, the following are some initial observations on the companies making the top 100:

* Samsung Electronics remained the number one ICT company at number 13, up from 14.
* Apple remained the number two ICT company at 15, up from 19.
* Hon Hai Precision Industry (Taiwan) came in at 32, down from 30, and remained the third-largest ICT company.
* AT&T Interactive came in at 34, the same position as last year.
* Verizon Communications is now at 42, up from 48.
* HP is now at 50, down from 43.
* NTT is now at 53, down from 32.
* China Mobile is now at 55, up from 71.
* IBM is now at 71, down from 62.
* Hitachi is now at 78, down from 54.
* Deutsche Telekom is now at 99, up from 105.

Other notable changes are:

* The entry by Qualcomm into the top 500, at 480.
* The displacement from the top 500 of Dell (privatised), Ricoh and Sprint Nextel (acquired by Softbank).
* Softbank showing the second-largest rise of any company in the list.
* NEC, Nokia and Quanta Computer making the 'top 20 that stumbled' list.
* The entries of Nokia, Sony and Telecom Italia into the 'top 30 money losers' list.

Further analysis of the Fortune Global 500 will follow next week.