RadioShack goes off air

RadioShack's bankruptcy application and Verizon's $15 billion+ disposals were the main events in the international ICT market last week.

At home, Net 1's announcement of a new UK subsidiary and speculation of the government's sell-off of its Vodacom stake were the key local stories.

* Good Q2 numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 12% and profit up 43%.
* A positive trading update from Silverbridge Holdings.
* Negative trading updates from Jasco and Vodacom.
* C5 Holdings (UK) made a R20 million investment in Parcelninja, an e-commerce start-up.
* IBM said a new research lab based in Johannesburg will be opened in April.
* Net 1 UEPS Technologies is establishing a UK subsidiary, Zazoo, to oversee the global expansion of its mobile payments and value-added services businesses.
* Guy Whitcroft resigned from IT4Africa.

* A quarterly loss from Bharti Africa (revenue also down).
* Botswana's government said Botswana Telecom will be privatised by July. The IPO was originally planned for December 2014.
* IBM launched its MEA Digital Sales Centre in Cairo.
* Tactile Technologies has opened a sister company, Newland ID South Africa, which is part of Newland EMEA (Newland Europe), which, in turn, is a full subsidiary of Fujian Newland Computer Company (China).
* Wambui Kinya has been named head of African operations for ThoughtWorks, based in Nairobi.

Look out for the possible sale by government of its 13.9% stake in Vodacom.

* Ansys acquired the assets of Numerical Technologies International, a developer of simulation software and services.
* Arrow Electronics bought RDC, a subsidiary of Computacenter UK.
* Brocade purchased Riverbed Technology's SteelApp product line.
* Columbus Nova, an investment management firm, acquired Sony's online gaming unit.
* Ericsson bought the playout business of UAE content creation zone, twofour54.
* Esker purchased TermSync, a cloud-based accounts receivable platform.
* Harris acquired Excelis, the ex-defence business of ITT, for $4.75 billion.
* Insight Venture Partners bought E2open, a maker of cloud-based software for supply chain management, for $273 million.
* Intel purchased Lantiq, a German maker of communications chips.
* Newport acquired Austria-based Femtolasers, a developer and manufacture of ultrafast laser systems.
* Synchronoss Technologies bought personal cloud assets from F-Secure, a global online security and privacy company, for $60 million.
* Symantec has been ordered to pay $17 million for patent infringement of two patents owned by Intellectual Ventures.
* Verizon Communications will sell wire-line assets to Frontline Communications for $10.54 billion and lease its cellphone towers to American Towers in a deal worth about $5 billion.
* Yahoo will spin off its Small Business unit with its Alibaba stake.
* RadioShack has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* Excellent quarterly results from Tableau Software and Yelp (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Alliance Data, GoPro and Pandora Media.
* Good quarterly numbers from Cadence Design Systems, Cognizant Technology Solutions, ePlus, IDG, Manhattan Associates, Nice Systems and Ultimate Software.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Advent Software, Bharti Airtel, Bharti Infratel, FIS, Fiserv, Level 3 Communications, Sony, Take-Two Interactive Software, TalkTalk and Vodafone.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Acxiom, Pitney Bowes, Symantec and Zain.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ADP, with revenue up but profit down; Alcatel-Lucent, with revenue down but profit up; Anixter International, with revenue up but profit down; Arrow Electronics, with revenue up but profit down; Belden, with revenue up but profit down; CDK Global, with revenue up but profit down; Ciber, with revenue down but profit up; FEI, with revenue up but profit down; Gartner, with revenue up but profit down; Genpact, with revenue up but profit down; Harris, with revenue down but profit up; Harte-Hanks, with revenue down but profit up; Lenovo, with revenue up but profit down; LinkedIn, with revenue up but profit down; Motorola Solutions, with revenue up but profit down; Synchronoss Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Teradata, with revenue up but profit down; VeriSign, with revenue up but profit down; and Vishay Intertechnology, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Atmel, Brooks Automation, Imperva, Interactive Intelligence, Mobily, Netgear, Nuance Communications, Sharp, Sprint, Stratasys and Twitter.
* The resignation of Sureyya Ciliv, CEO of Turkcell, the organisation that was suing MTN over licences in Iran.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from MaxPoint Interactive, a provider of BI and marketing automation software services.
* A good IPO in Switzerland by Sunrise, a Swiss mobile operator.

* Worldwide tablet shipments declined 3.2% in Q4 2014 to 76.1 million units, with Lenovo gaining the number three slot behind Apple and Samsung.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 3.8%
* S&P 500: Up 3%
* FTSE100: Up 1.5%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.1%
* Hang Seng: Down 0.7%
* Shanghai: Down 4.2%
* Top SA share movements: CompuClearing (+8.5%), Ellies (-7.1%), Jasco (-22.1%), Silverbridge Holdings (+11%), Telemasters (-20.9%) and Telkom SA (+12.5%)

International:
* The possible sale of Motorola Solutions.

South Africa:
* The possible sale by government of its 13.9% stake in Vodacom.
* The sell-off by Telkom SA of its cellphone network towers.
* A possible further interest in Telkom SA by MTN, over and above the latter's proposed take-over of Telkom's radio access network.

The Africa Report Top 500 Companies in Africa listing has just been published. The following are some of the rankings/changes of technology companies on the continent. As previously, there are no IT companies included from any other country apart from SA.

In the top 25 are:
* 6: MTN (was number four)
* 12: Vodacom Group (was number 11)
* 19: Naspers (was 20)
* 22: Vodacom SA (was 14)
* 23: Datatec (was 29)

Other major movements include:
* 64: Mobinil (Egypt), up from 97
* 95: Safaricom (Kenya), up from 110
* 141: Reunert, down from 114
* 157: Wataniya Telecom Algerie, up from 175
* 170: Tunisie Telecom, a new entry
* 201: ATS Mobilis (Algeria), a new entry
* 233: Pinnacle Holdings, down from 204
* 253: BCX, down from 205
* 256: Bytes Technology Group, down from 174
* 324: Orascom Telecom Media and Technologies (Egypt), up from 352
* 341: Mustek, down from 315
* 477: Moov C^ote d'Ivoire, a new entry