Lenovo spends big, again

Lenovo's second multibillion-dollar deal in two weeks, and Liberty Global's $9 billion acquisition of Ziggo dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, Mxit's launch in India was the main story of a quiet week.

* Positive trading updates from Morvest Business Group and Silverbridge Holdings.
* BitCo acquired Vectieba Networks, a WISP servicing Rustenburg and its surrounding areas.
* T-Systems bought Intervate, an enterprise EIM solutions provider.
* Mxit has launched its Indian operation, headed-up by Sam Rufus Nallaraj.
* IBM has launched an intelligent operations centre in Johannesburg, the second in Africa. The first was in Kenya.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Morvest Business Group.

* The launch of the .africa domain has been delayed until later in 2014.
* The ICT Authority board in Kenya has been inaugurated.
* A deal has been reached regarding the Asia Africa Europe-1 broadband cable system, which is expected to be completed by 2016. The touch points in Africa are Egypt and Djibouti.
* The appointments of Basil Manasrah as CEO of Zain South Sudan; and Darren Roos as SAP's EMEA COO.
* The resignations of Wassim Mansour, CEO of Zain South Sudan; and Darren Roos from Software AG.

* Bottomline Technologies acquired Rationalwave Analytics, a provider of cloud-based payment, invoice and banking systems.
* Dassault Systemes bought US-based Accelrys, a scientific software firm, for $750 million.
* An investment company of the Foxconn Group has purchased Socle Technology, an IC design service firm.
* Google acquired DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company, for $400 million.
* JDS Uniphase bought Trendium, a provider of real-time intelligence software solutions, and Time-Bandwidth Products, a provider of high-powered and ultrafast lasers.
* Lenovo purchased Google's handset division (Motorola Mobility) in the largest-ever technology deal involving a Chinese company. The deal was worth $2.91 billion.
* Liberty Global acquired Ziggo, the Dutch cable company, for EUR6.9 billion.
* Mentor Graphics bought the AUTOSAR assets of Mecel.
* Twitter purchased 900 patents from IBM, and signed a cross-licensing agreement with the company.

Look out for Microsoft's naming of Satya Nadella, its cloud computing head, as its new CEO.

* Yahoo acquired Incredible Labs, a start-up competitor to Google Now.
* Zynga bought NaturalMotion, a mobile games developer, for $527 million.
* Ericsson has struck a deal with Samsung regarding a patent dispute.
* Ericsson has secured a cross-licensing agreement with Google.
* Qualcomm faces a record anti-trust fine (>$1 billion) in China.
* A St Louis professor has filed a lawsuit against Square for alleged fraud and patent infringement.
* AT&T said it is not currently considering a bid for Vodafone.
* Lenovo has made several organisational and senior leadership changes.
* The Swiss government has reduced its stake in Swisscom to 51.22%, the minimum that still gives it a majority stake, as required by law.
* Excellent quarterly results from Alibaba (back in the black) and Facebook.
* Very good year-end figures from Hynix Semiconductor (back in the black) and MediaTek.
* Very good quarterly figures from Interactive Intelligence.
* Good quarterly numbers from Amazon, Bharti Airtel, CommVault Systems, Flextronics International, Google, LAM Research, Microchip Technology and VMware.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from CGI Group.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amdocs, AT&T (back in the black), AVX, BT Group, Check Point Software Technologies, Citrix Systems, DST Systems, EMC, Ericsson (back in the black), JDS Uniphase, Lexmark, MicroStrategy, Plantronics, RF Micro Devices (back in the black), Riverbed Technology and Unisys.
* Mediocre quarterly results from AU Optronics, Broadcom, CACI International, Cirrus Logic, Corning, CSC, L-3 Communications, Seagate Technology, Software AG and TeliaSonera.
* Mixed nine-month figures from Toshiba, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Apple, with revenue up but profit down; Celestica, with revenue down but profit up; DoCoMo, with revenue down but profit up; Harris, with revenue down but profit up; Micros Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Pitney Bowes, with revenue up but profit down; Qualcomm, with revenue up but profit down; Sanmina, with revenue down but profit up; ScanSource, with revenue down but profit up; SK Telecom, with revenue up but profit down; Symantec, with revenue down but profit up; Yahoo, with revenue down but profit up; and Zain, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Bottomline Technologies, Cavium, LG Electronics, NetSuite, Quantum, Silicon Graphics and STMicroelectronics.
* The appointments of Christian de Faria as CEO of Bharti Airtel's international operations; and Rick Tsai as chairman and CEO of Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan).
* The resignations of Vivek Badrinth, deputy CEO of Orange; Manoj Kohli as CEO of Bharti Airtel's international operations; and Ren'e Schuster, CEO of Telefonica Deutschland.
* The retirement of Yen-Sung Lee, chairman and CEO of Chunghwa Telecom.
* IPO filings from Box, an online storage company and a rival of Dropbox; JD.com, China's second-largest e-commerce company behind Alibaba, which is also intending to list this year; and Paylocity, a provider of cloud-based payroll and HCM software solutions.
* A good IPO on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange by Altice, a telecommunications holding company.

International:
* Microsoft's naming of Satya Nadella, its cloud computing head, as its new CEO.
* A possible investment by China Mobile in Vodafone.
* The acquisition by Yahoo of Tomfoolery, a business app developer.
* The possible acquisition by Liberty Global of Ono, a Spanish TV, broadband and telecommunications provider.
* The possible exit by Tata from the telecommunications market.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Net 1 UEPS Technologies and the SASSA tender.

* EMEA/Africa:
* PC shipments in East Africa grew 3% in Q4 2013, according to IDC.
* Worldwide:
* Global OTT messaging volumes will almost double to around 20 trillion this year, according to Analysys Mason.
* An estimated 62.14 million tablets will be shipped this quarter, an increase of 10.9% from last year, according to Digitimes Research.
* By 2015, 25% of large global organisations will have appointed a chief data officer, according to Gartner.
* Vendors shipped over one billion smartphones in 2013, a rise of 38.4% from 2012, according to IDC.
* Worldwide tablet shipments grew 28.2% in Q4 2013 to 76.9 million units, according to IDC.
* Global mobile phone shipments grew 5% in 2013 to reach 1.7 billion units, according to Strategy Analytics. The top five consisted of Samsung, Nokia, Apple, LG and TCL-Alcatel.
* Samsung sold a record 86 million smartphones in Q4 2013 and widened its lead over Apple (51 million), according to Strategy Analytics. Huawei and Lenovo rose to the number three and four positions, with 16.6 million and 13.6 million respectively.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.1%
* S&P 500: Down 0.4%
* FTSE100: Down 2.3%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-15%), Ansys (-11.4%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-7.9%), Ellies (-13.8%), Gijima (-7.5%), Huge Group (+18.8%), Jasco (-8.9%), MICROmega Holdings (-7.5%), Morvest Business Group (+10%), Pinnacle Holdings (-7.8%) and Poynting (+7.9%)

According to Accenture's recently published: 'The Accenture Technology Vision 2014', six technology trends are enabling large enterprises to join those start-ups previously recognised as market disrupters in pushing the boundaries of innovation and taking advantage of digital technologies for competitive advantage.

The six big technology trends identified as driving the digital power shift are:
* The digital-physical blur, as the real world comes online, and as wearable devices, smart objects, and machines provide real-time intelligence, thus changing how we live and how businesses operate.
* From workforce to crowdsource, as technology makes enterprises borderless, allowing companies to tap resources from around the world.
* The data supply chain, as more companies integrate their data across the enterprise.
* Harnessing hyperscale, as companies optimise their power consumption, processors, solid state memory and infrastructure architectures to increase data centre efficiency, scale upward and drive down costs.
* The business of applications, as enterprises follow consumers by rapidly adopting apps to create better operational agility.
* Architecting resilience, as businesses now have to operate 24/7.