Apple shares soar

The excellent quarterly results from Apple dominated the international ICT market last week, and resulted in Apple shares hitting an all-time high. This makes it the most valuable company in the world, worth over $430 billion.

Look out for an early IPO filing by Facebook.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

At home, the R2.58 billion outsourcing deal between Old Mutual and T-Systems stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Positive trading updates from AdaptIT, Gijima Group and Pinnacle Technology.
* Jasco acquired Ferro Resistant Technologies, a company that manufactures, supplies, designs, installs and maintains power and energy solutions.
* Liquid Telecom bought a subsidiary of the Econet Wireless Group, of Zimbabwe Online, one of that country's largest ISPs.
* A R2.58 billion IT infrastructure management outsourcing deal between Old Mutual and T-Systems was announced, which extends the existing relationship through to 2019 and replaces the original deal signed in 2008.
* A BEE deal between Net1 UEPS Technologies and a consortium that includes Mosomo Investment Holdings was announced.
* The DOC said the launch of digital TV has been delayed from April until later in 2012.
* Henry Ferreira was named CEO of distribution for Pinnacle Technology; and Fagri Semaar was appointed MD of Teleperformance SA.
* Henry Ferreira resigned as regional GM of Lenovo SA.

* The third wireless operator, GECOSMA, debuted in Equatorial Guinea.
* Orascom Telecom's subsidiary, Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding, will list on Egypt's stock exchange.

* Huawei bought the Centre for Integrated Photonics, a UK-based fibre-optic research firm.
* Intel acquired QLogic's InfiniBand assets, in a move designed to strengthen the former's networking and high-performance computing capabilities.
* Intel bought patents and video software owned by RealNetworks for $120 million.
* j2 Global acquired Offsite Backup Solutions, a provider of online backup solutions.
* Semtech purchased Gennum, a supplier of high-speed analogue and mixed-signal semiconductors.
* Synopsys bought ExpertIO, a maker of software used in testing and debugging electronics in storage and networking devices.
* Twitter acquired Summify, a social news aggregator.
* Excellent quarterly results from Apple.
* Good quarterly numbers from CA Technologies, Citrix Systems, EMC, Informatica, Micros Systems, Polycom, Riverbed Technology, Samsung Electronics, SAP, VeriSign (back in the black) and VMware.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Cypress Semiconductor and Symantec.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Altera, Corning, Juniper Networks, KLA-Tencor, KPN, Lam Research, Logitech International, Maxim Integrated Products, Molex, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments, Western Digital and Yahoo.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Compuware, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue up but profit down; Idea Cellular, with revenue up but profit down; Motorola Solutions, with revenue up but profit down; Netflix, with revenue up but profit down; SanDisk, with revenue up but profit down; and Xerox, with revenue down but profit well up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Ariba and ST-Ericsson.
* Quarterly losses from AMD, AT&T, Freescale Semiconductor, LG Display, LSI, Motorola Mobility, Nokia, Rambus, RF Micro Devices, Tata Communications and Verizon Communications.
* Thorsten Heins was appointed president and CEO of Research In Motion (RIM).
* The resignations of Jim Balsillie, co-founder, joint-CEO, and joint-chairman of RIM; and Mike Lazaridis, co-founder, joint-CEO, and joint-chairman of RIM.
* Mark Duncan, president and COO of Micron Technology, retired.
* A good IPO on NYSE by Guidewire Software, a company that focuses on offering back-end cloud-based solutions for property and casualty insurers. It was the first technology IPO of 2012.

International:

* An early IPO filing by Facebook.
* A merger between Elpida Memory, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology.

Africa:

* Possible tower sharing by Hits Telecom with service providers in Liberia and Tanzania.

South Africa:

* The appointment of an MD for Telkom Mobile.

* Dimension Data is the largest provider of IT services in SA in 2010, with 15.4%, according to BMI-T. Business Connexion and T-Systems filled the number two and three slots respectively, with 9.1% and 7.1%.

* IT spending in Middle East, Africa and Turkey is expected to grow by almost 12% to surpass $65 billion, according to IDC. It expects SA to grow by between 7% and 12% this year.

* Nearly one-third of organisations use or plan to use cloud offerings to augment business intelligence capabilities, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.6% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.1%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-20%), Datacentrix (-5.5%), Gijima (-14.1%), Ifca Technologies (-12.5%), MICROmega (+7.9%), Poynting Antennas (-14.3%) and Sekunjalo (-11.9%)

IDC has announced its top 10 predictions for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey IT markets in 2012. They are as follows:

1. IT markets will recover from the Arab Spring, but face global economic headwinds.
2. 'Populist' governments will seek to accelerate e-service delivery to citizens.
3. Virtualisation will move from 'test' to 'production' and will attain 'must-have' status.
4. Cloud will receive more serious attention, but widespread adoption will be inhibited by insufficient infrastructure and skills.
5. LTE and NFC (near-field communications) will drive the next level of mobile technology adoption.
6. Media tablets and enterprise mobile applications will transform employee productivity.
7. Unified communications and collaboration technologies such as video conferencing and telepresence will take off.
8. Line-of-business demand will make analytics more pervasive.
9. 'Big brother' initiatives will intensify in the Middle East as information security gains in importance.
10. Telecommunications companies will continue to extend their ICT portfolios, focusing on the 'I' in ICT, with cloud as a major strategic direction.