Apple in hot water

The $2 billion+ acquisitions by IBM and Salesforce.com, and the latest ruling against Apple regarding Samsung patent infringements, were the top international ICT stories last week.

At home, the investment by Pinnacle Technology in Datacentrix and the disposal by Times Media of its remaining stake in MapIT were the main local stories.

Also, I would like to sincerely apologise for any embarrassment or misunderstanding caused by my column last week regarding the reference to the JSE cautionaries by Mix Telematics and Stella Vista. The de-listing comment was meant to refer to the latter company only.

* A full-year loss from Labat Africa, with revenue down 14.8%.
* Negative trading updates from Telkom SA and Trustco.
* TomTom acquired the remaining 51% of the shares of MapIT it doesn't already own, for R37.5 million.
* Pinnacle Technology made a R237.3 million (29.79%) investment in Datacentrix.
* BlackBerry has opened a third application lab in SA, based at the JoziHub mobile and ICT co-creation hub in Johannesburg.
* Electronic Arts has closed its SA office.
* ICASA has set the deadline for the publication of local loop unbundling regulations as 4 March 2014.
* The formal launch by Hisense of its new manufacturing facility in Cape Town, which will produce TVs and refrigerators. In addition, Hisense has announced it will also offer its mobile phones and tablets in the local market.
* Withdrawn JSE cautionaries by AdaptIT and Business Connexion.
* The annotation by the JSE of the listings of Labat Africa and TCS, following their recently released financial statements that had modifications by their respective auditors.
* The appointments of Teddy Daka as CEO of Ansys; and Nonhlanhla Mjoli-Mncube as chairman of Ansys.

* Liquid Telecom purchased Rwandatel's landline assets. Rwandatel, which is 80% owned by Libya-based LAP Green, filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

Electronic Arts has closed its SA office.

* Rinat Ashmetov, Ukraine's richest man, bought Ukrtelecom, that country's fixed-line telecoms company and its only 3G mobile Internet licence holder, for $1 billion.
* IBM acquired SoftLayer Technologies, a database Web hosting company, for more than $2 billion.
* Microsoft purchased the InRelease business of InCycle Software, a provider of application life cycle management services and release management solutions on the .net platform.
* Salesforce.com bought ExactTarget, a cloud marketing platform, for $2.5 billion.
* SAP acquired hybris, a leader in e-commerce technology.
* Xerox purchased LearnSomething, a digital education solutions provider.
* Wipro invested in Axeda, an M2M platform provider.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Apple has been ordered by a French court to pay $6.5 million in copyright taxes on iPad sales in 2011.
* The US ITC said Apple had infringed Samsung patents on older iPhones and iPads, in a move that might mean an import ban into the USA of some Apple devices. Obama has 60 days to exercise his presidential powers to overturn the ruling, although most of his predecessors in such cases have stood by the ITC rulings.
* Cisco, Motorola Mobility (Google) and Time Warner Cable have reached a settlement with TiVo over their patent row worth at least $490 million.
* AT&T has sold a portion of its America Movil stockholding for $564 million, thus keeping its stake at the 9% level.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Comtech Telecommunications and SAIC.
* Quarterly losses from Ciena and Vodafone Qatar.
* The appointments of Keith Block (an ex-Oracle executive) as president and vice-chairman of Salesforce.com; Andy Mattes (ex-HP executive) as CEO of Diebold; and NR Narayana Murthy as chairman of Infosys (was a co-founder of the company).
* An IPO filing from Israeli-based Wix.com, a company that offers Web technology that enables online users to customise Web sites regardless of technical skill or previous knowledge.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Textura, a maker of software for the construction industry.

* International:
* The sale by Telefonica of its O2 Ireland operation.
* The creation of a joint venture between NEC and Lenovo for smartphones.
* The split-off by Hon Hai Precision Industry in July of its connector business into a separate entity.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Telkom SA and further announcements from the Department of Communications.

* Worldwide mobile payment transaction value to surpass $235 billion in 2013, a 44% increase from 2012, according to Gartner.
* Smartphone shipments will grow 32.7% this year to reach 958.8 million units, according to IDC.
* One-and-a-half billion smartphones will be shipped worldwide in 2017, and will account for 73% of all mobile phone shipments, according to Canalys. From an operating system perspective, Android will account for 67.1%, Apple for 14.1% and Microsoft for 12.7%.
* The worldwide BI, CPM and analytic applications/performance management software market grew 7% in 2012, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide external disk storage factory revenue declined 0.9% in Q1 2013 to just over $5.9 billion, according to IDC. This was the first quarterly decline since 2009 and saw HP drop to the number five slot, behind EMC, NetApp, IBM and Hitachi.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: Datacentrix (+30.3%), ISA (+28.3%), Labat Africa (+8.3%), Pinnacle Technology (+8.6%), Poynting (+12.1%), SecureData (-8.6%), Sekunjalo (-8.6%), Silverbridge (-16%), Trustco (-18.3%) and Telemasters (+34.6%)

African Business has just released its 2013 version of its 'Africa's Top 250' listing, which ranks African-listed businesses by their market capitalisation.

The list, however, is somewhat suspicious, as several South African ICT companies are missing and deserve to be included when their market capitalisations are examined. These include Altron (although Altech is listed), Blue Label Telecoms and Vodacom. In addition, Dimension Data, which is not listed, is included.

From an ICT perspective, the following are listed in the top 100:
* 5: MTN
* 6: Naspers
* 14: Maroc Telecom
* 18: Dimension Data
* 40: Telecom Egypt
* 41: Sonatel (Senegal)
* 47: Safaricom (Kenya)
* 61: Mobinil (Egypt)
* 65: Reunert