Big Apple gets bigger

Apple's record-breaking Q4 profit was the main story of the international ICT market during a very quiet week.

At home, it was also very quiet.

* CZ Electronics, the local manufacturer of PCs and tablets, will double its workforce in the second half of this year.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Ansys and Labat Africa.
* The appointments of Ian Merrington as CEO of The Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative; and Peter van Zyl as CEO of ConvergeNet Holdings.

* Brainworks Capital Management proposed a $20 million (40% stake) investment in Telecel Zimbabwe.
* Maroc Telecom closed the acquisition of six businesses in Africa that previously belonged to Etisalat, its new parent company.

Google will change its privacy policy, after an investigation by the UK data watchdog found it too vague.

* Apple set a new world record for the most profitable quarter of any company in history, says credit ratings giant Standard & Poor's, reporting a net profit of $18 billion for the financial quarter ending 27 December 2014.
* Arrow Electronics acquired Data Modul.
* AT&T bought Nextel Mexico from bankrupt NII Holdings for $1.9 billion.
* CommScope purchased the network business of TE Connectivity for $3 billion.
* SS&C Technologies Holdings, a financial software company, acquired Advent Software, an accounting software maker, for $2.3 billion.
* Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital group, made a $58 million investment in TransferWise, the money transfer group.
* Elliott Management invested (8% stake) in Informatica.
* KKR, a private equity firm, made a $35 million investment in ClickTale, a Web analytics company.
* Microsoft invested in Cyanogen, a start-up that is building a version of Android outside of Google's auspices.
* Google will change its privacy policy, after an investigation by the UK data watchdog found it too vague. Regulators in France and Spain have already fined Google over its privacy policy.
* Yahoo will spin off its Alibaba stake (15%) into a separately listed company.
* AT&T was the top buyer at the recent airwaves auction ($18.2 billion). Dish Network, via its bidding partners, came in second by bidding $13.3 billion; Verizon Communications bid $10.4 billion; and T-Mobile bid $1.8 billion.
* Excellent quarterly results from SK Hynix.
* Very good quarterly figures from Apple, Corning, Facebook, Kulicke & Soffa (back in the black) and Open Text.
* Good quarterly numbers from Idea Cellular, LG Display and QLogic.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amdocs, Aspen Technology, AU Optronics, Broadcom (profit more than double), DST Systems, EMC, Flextronics International, Google, Informatica, Inotera Memories, Kofax, LAM Research, Nokia (back in the black), PC Connection, PMC-Sierra (back in the black), Qualcomm, Riverhead Technology, Seagate Technology, Software AG, Synaptics, TE Connectivity, Texas Instruments, Time Warner Cable and UMC.
* Mediocre quarterly results from CACI International, CommVault Systems, Lockheed Martin's IS & Global Services division, Quantum (back in the black), Samsung Electronics, TeliaSonera, Unisys, Xerox and Yahoo.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alibaba, with revenue up but profit down; Amazon, with revenue up but profit down; AVX, with revenue down but profit up; Black Box, with revenue up but profit down; Canon, with revenue down but profit up; Checkpoint Software Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Cirrus Logic, with revenue up but profit down; CGI, with revenue down but profit up; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; EFI, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue up but profit down; Fair Isaac, with revenue up but profit down; Fortinet, with revenue up but profit down; Intersil, with revenue down but profit up; L-3 Communications, with revenue down but profit up; Microchip Technology, with revenue up but profit down; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; MicroStrategy, with revenue down but profit up; Nanya Technology, with revenue down but profit up; Plantronics, with revenue up but profit down; Rambus, with revenue down but back in the black; Rogers Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Sanmina, with revenue up but profit down; ScanSource, with revenue up but profit down; STMicroelectronics, with revenue down but back in the black; VMware, with revenue up but profit down; and Western Digital, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Applied Micro Circuits, AT&T, Bottomline Technologies, ESI, Extreme Networks, Hutchison Technologies, JDS Uniphase, Juniper Networks, Lexmark, LG Electronics, Mellanox, NetSuite, ServiceNow, Silicon Graphics and Teradyne.

EMEA/Africa:
* Flash storage is a key part of the EMEA storage market, with $2.9 billion in value in 2014, a growth of 32%, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Global tablet shipments grew 16.9% sequentially in Q4 2014 to reach 74.77 million units, according to Digitimes Research.
* By 2020, 250 million connected vehicles will enable new in-vehicle services and automated driving capabilities, according to Gartner.
* The global smartphone application processor market grew 16% in Q3 2014 to $5.6 billion, according to Strategy Analytics.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 2.1%
* S&P 500: Down 2.8%
* FTSE100: Down 1.2%
* Nikkei225: Up 0.9%
* Hang Seng: Down 1.4%
* Shanghai: Down 4.2%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (+12.6%), Ansys (+11.4%), Huge Group (-8.3%), Jasco (+18.5%), Labat Africa (+9.1%), Metrofile (+8.4%) and Prescient (+12.2%)

International:
* Further developments regarding the break-up of HP and Symantec.
* The large number of potential lay-offs from IBM, following its disappointing Q4 and 2014 results.

South Africa:
* Further developments in the local telecoms market.

The Chinese most valuable 'brands' list has just been published. From a technology perspective, the following are of note:
* 1: Tencent
* 2: Alibaba
* 3: China Mobile
* 5: Baidu

Fast Company recently introduced its South Africa edition. The latest issue included the '2014 World's Most Innovative Companies' list, together with SA's top 25 contenders. The following are included in the lists from a technology perspective:

World list:
* 1. Google
* 3. Xiaomi
* 4. Dropbox
* 5. Netflix
* 8. Twitter
* 9. Apple
* 12. Amazon
* 21. Square
* 25. iHub (Kenya)
* 27. WhatsApp
* 28. GoPro

SA list:
* 1. HealthQ
* 2. takealot.com
* 4. Entersekt
* 5. wiGroup
* 18. SnapScan