MTN scores for Africa

The fallout from the Facebook IPO dominated the international ICT world last week, despite several multibillion acquisition transactions.

At home, it was very quiet, with Vodacom's financial results and the company's ongoing issues in the DRC being one of the week's main stories.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from Vodacom, with revenue up 9.4% and profit up 27.9%.
* Mixed year-end numbers from ISA, with revenue up 3.5% but profit down 5.7%.
* Good year-end numbers from Neotel, with revenue up about 25%, although no actual figures are available.
* A negative trading update from Zaptronix.
* MTN entered the world's most valuable brands list, making it the first African brand to do so. It came in at number 88.

* The acquisition by Datatec (Westcon Group) of the 33.1% interest in its African subsidiaries, excluding Westcon SA, which it did not already own.

Google's Chrome has overtaken Internet Explorer as the world's most widely-used browser.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The $7.1 billion acquisition by Alibaba of the 20% (half of Yahoo's stake) shareholding owned by Yahoo.
* The acquisition (49%) by Bharti Airtel of Qualcomm's 4G wireless venture.
* The $11.8 billion acquisition by Eaton of Cooper Industries, an electrical equipment maker.
* EMC bought Synplicity, a cloud-based sync and share file management provider.
* Facebook bought Karma Science, a start-up that offers technology for sending gifts through mobile devices.
* The EUR618 million acquisition by Kabel Deutschland, Germany's largest cable operator, of Telecom Columbus, a regional cable provider.
* The $330 million acquisition by Oracle of Vitrue, a maker of marketing software for use on social networks.
* The $4.3 billion purchase by SAP of Ariba, a software maker.
* The acquisition (64.5%) by Seagate Technology of LaCie, a manufacturer of storage devices,
* VMware purchased Wanova, a provider of centralised endpoint management and recovery technologies.
* The announcement that Google's Android mobile platform had not infringed Oracle's patents.
* Kodak lost its patent case against Apple and Research In Motion.
* Google's Chrome has overtaken Internet Explorer as the world's most widely-used browser.
* Excellent quarterly results from Lenovo.
* Good quarterly numbers from NetApp.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from MobileTeleSystems.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Analog Devices, Dell and HP.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Avago Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Cable & Wireless Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Compuware, with revenue up but profit down; Tech Data, with revenue down but profit up; and, VeriFone Systems, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end results from Vodafone, with revenue up but profit down.

* An annual loss from Cable & Wireless Worldwide.
* The appointment of Dennis Woodside as CEO of Motorola Mobility.
* The resignations of Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility; and, Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, now part of HP.

* International:
* The outcome of the various lawsuits and probes that have been filed following the Facebook IPO.
* Dell's acquisition of Quest Software.

* South Africa:
* Vodacom's disposal of its Gateway unit.

* According to Gartner, the worldwide outsourcing market grew 7.8% in 2011 to reach $246.6 billion. IBM retained its top slot but Fujitsu ousted CSC for the third position behind HP.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.1%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-33.3%), BCX-A (-9.7%), Gijima (-11.1%), Huge Group (+11.1%), Ifca Technologies (-14.3%), Poynting (+14.9%) and Zaptronix (-33.3%)

The annual listing of the world's most valuable brands has been published. From a technology perspective, the following are the leading brands and a selection of the others:

* 1 Apple
* 2 IBM
* 3 Google
* 5 Microsoft
* 8 AT&T
* 9 Verizon
* 10 China Mobile
* 12 Vodafone
* 18 Amazon.com
* 19 Facebook
* 20 Deutsche Telekom
* 22 SAP
* 25 Baidu
* 37 Tencent
* 55 Samsung
* 71 Airtel
* 86 Sony
* 88 MTN
* 90 China Telecom