Changing of the guard at Samsung

The international world was reasonably quiet last week, and included a number of small acquisitions and the appointment of a new group CEO at Samsung Electronics, the world's number one ICT company by revenue.

At home, the disastrous year-end results from Telkom SA dominated a week that was otherwise very quiet.

African Cellular Towers has been placed under provisional liquidation.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* A full-year loss from Telkom SA, with revenue also down 0.7%.
* A negative trading update from Stella Vista.
* Digicall Solutions acquired the SA arm of International SOS, a provider of medical and security services for partners such as Vodacom's emergency services.
* Vodacom sold off certain parts of Gateway Carrier Services to PCCW Global for $26.4 million.
* African Cellular Towers has been placed under provisional liquidation.
* Frank van Rees was appointed enterprise group lead for HP SA.
* Motlatsi Nzeku resigned as MD of Telkom SA's international operations and subsidiaries.

* The Friendi Group and the Virgin Group will create Virgin Mobile MEA, which will develop and operate mobile telecommunications business across the region. It will initially absorb Virgin Mobile SA and Friendi's operations in Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
* The Cameroon Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications seeks to appoint a third mobile operator to complement MTN and Orange, which currently operate in that country.

* BCE bought Q9 Networks, a Canadian data centre operator, for C$1.1 billion.
* Belden purchased Canadian Miranda Technologies, a broadcast equipment maker, for C$372 million.
* Citrix Systems acquired Bytemobile, a provider of data and video optimisation solutions for mobile network operators.
* Descartes Systems Group bought Infodis, a Netherlands-based provider of SaaS transportation management systems.
* EMC purchased Watch4Net, a provider of solutions that measure the performance of networks, data centres and cloud-based infrastructures.
* Google acquired Quickoffice, a specialist in office productivity technologies.
* Google also bought Meebo, a social media start-up that helps online publishers connect their Web sites with social network sites.
* Oracle purchased Collective Intellect, a provider of a cloud-based social analytics platform.
* Salesforce.com acquired Buddy Media, a social marketing and analysis tools provider, for $689 million.
* Teradata bought eCircle, a provider of a cloud-based marketing tool.
* Qtel (Qatar) made an additional investment in Asiacell, the Iraqi mobile operator.
* Telecom New Zealand plans to de-list from the NYSE (a few years ago, Telkom SA did the same).
* Quarterly losses from SeaChange International and Vodafone Qatar.
* The appointments of Khaled al-Ghoneim as CEO of Saudi Telecom Group; Daniel Allen as president and CEO of CACI International; Greg Lowe as CEO of Freescale Semiconductor; and Kwon Oh-hyun as CEO of Samsung Electronics.
* The resignation of Choi Gee-sung, CEO of Samsung Electronics.
* The retirements of Paul Confoni, president and CEO of CACI International (as of 1 December); and Bill McCracken, CEO of CA Technologies (as of a date yet to be specified)
* An IPO filing by iWatt, a provider of power management ICs.
* An IPO filing from Qualys, a cloud security provider.

* International:
* The possible acquisition of TelstraClear (New Zealand) by Vodafone.
* Africa:
* A possible investment by Vodacom in Sierra Leone.
* South Africa:
* More developments regarding Telkom SA, following its dreadful year-end results, which also don't seem to include any provision for the fine that will emanate from the Competition Tribunal's recent findings.

* Kingston Technology was the world's number one supplier of USB drives in 2011, with almost a 30% market share, followed by SanDisk, with a 21.7% market share, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide mobile phone market is forecast to grow just over 4% this year, the slowest annual growth since 2009, according to IDC. Android will take the largest market share with 61%, followed by iOS with 20.5%, BlackBerry OS with 6%, and Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile with 5.2%.
* The worldwide external controller-based disk storage market grew 8% in Q1 2012 to $5.4 billion, with all the top eight players retaining their positions, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.7%
* Nasdaq: Up 4%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-9.5%), Gijima (-7.3%), Huge Group (-7.6%), MICROmega Holdings (-8%), Net1 UEPS Technologies (-13.2%), Poynting (-10.5%) and Zaptronix (-33.3%)

IDC has released its latest quarterly forecast for the local market, which it expects to be worth almost R238 billion in 2012, almost 7% up from 2011. The breakdown of this figure is as follows:

* IT services - R39.3 billion
* Packaged software - R15.7 billion
* Hardware, including telecoms equipment - R46.6 billion
* Telecoms services - R136.3 billion