Facebook adds to its coffers

In the international ICT arena, Apple announced Steve Jobs would take medical leave, leaving Tim Cook in charge.

In other major news, the Goldman Sachs Group and Digital Sky Technologies invested $1.5 billion in Facebook.

At home, it was very quiet, although there were several small acquisitions/investments.

* Spescom's shares were suspended on the JSE following its acquisition by Jasco.

* Blue Turtle Technologies acquired Column Technologies, SA's BMC Software practice.

* Australia-based technology provider Iress bought Horizon Equity Partners' shares in Peresys, a local technology services provider to the financial sector.

* Magic Software Enterprises purchased Magix Integration, its South African distributor, in a move that will see the latter split into two companies, Magix Integration and Magix Security.

* The shareholders of Simeka have approved the name change to Morvest Business Group.

* The appointments of Dave King as chairman of MICROmega; and Carlien Thomson as MD of Logic Group, the business and financial software solutions company.

* The resignations of Solly Mokoetle, CEO of the SABC; Greg Morris, chairman of MICROmega; and Errol Willis, MD of Logic Group.

Helios Investment Partners invested in Interswitch, the largest transaction switching and electronic payment processing service provider in Nigeria.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has gone on medical leave.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* ABB, the power and automation company, acquired US-based Obvient Strategies, a provider of packaged business intelligence for the distributed asset industry.

* Goldman Sachs Group and Digital Sky Technologies made a $1.5 billion investment in Facebook, valuing the latter at $50 billion.

* RightNow Technologies purchased Q-go.com, a Dutch company that provides online customer service technology for the airline, financial services and telecommunications industries. The deal was worth $34 million.

* Samsung bought Liquavista, an e-paper technology company based in the Netherlands.

* General Atlantic, a private equity group, made a 20% investment in Kaspersky Lab, the Russian anti-virus software maker.

* Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has gone on medical leave and left Tim Cook, its COO, in charge of the company's day-to-day operations.

* HP has had a major shake-up of its board and appointed five new directors, including Meg Whitman, ex-CEO of eBay, and Patricia Russo, ex-CEO of Alcatel-Lucent.

* Lenovo has formed a mobile Internet unit, which will focus on mobile Internet and digital home-type devices.

* Excellent quarterly results from Apple, ASML Holding NV and HTC.

* Very good quarterly figures from F5 Networks, Google, HCL Technologies and Polycom.

* Good quarterly numbers from Flextronics, Tata Consultancy Services, Tyco Electronics and Xilinx.

* Satisfactory quarterly results from IBM, Tech Mahindra and Wipro.

* Mediocre quarterly results from AMD, Seagate Technology and Western Digital.

* Mixed quarterly figures from eBay, with revenue up but profit down, and Sony Ericsson, with revenue down but back in the black.

* Quarterly losses from LG Display.

* The appointments of John Hunter as CEO of UK-listed SDL; Tore Johnsen as CEO of Grameenphone (Bangladesh); Vinod Kumar as MD and CEO of Tata Communications; Larry Page as CEO of Google; and John Stanton as chairman of Clearwire.

* The resignations of Oddvar Hesjedal, CEO of Grameenphone; Mark Lancaster, CEO of SDL (remains as chairman); and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (stays on as executive chairman).

International:

* A possible tie-up in the PC business between NEC and Lenovo.
* The buyout of the Essar Group's 33% stake in Vodafone Essar, by Vodafone and Analjit Singh, an investor.

Africa:

* Resolution regarding the Nitel situation as the favoured consortium has now raised the necessary deposit.

South Africa:

* The gazetting of the ICT charter in April.
* A replacement CEO at Neotel when the contract of Ajay Pandey, the current CEO, expires.

The top 10 OEM manufacturers accounted for $104.3 billion of semiconductor demand in 2010, over a third of semiconductor vendors' worldwide chip revenue, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.6%

* Nasdaq: Down 2.4%

* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-8.3%), Ansys (+31.9%), Dialogue Group (+18.8%), IFCA Technologies (-20%), MICROmega (+99%) and Zaptronix (+25%)

IDC recently released its “Top Ten Predictions for the 2011 Middle East, Turkey and Africa IT Market”, which it says will be characterised by disruptive technologies such as cloud, virtualisation, mobility, and analytics. This will shape the IT strategies of organisations in this region and provide a new platform of growth for the IT industry.