AT&T shops up a storm

The international ICT market was quiet, with the main stories being some major acquisitions by AT&T and Cisco's sell-off of its Linksys unit.

At home it was also quiet, with the Department of Communications' announcement regarding its DG being the main story.

* Positive trading updates from AdaptIT and Pinnacle Technology.
* The Department of Communications' DG, Rosey Sekese, has been placed on "special leave", with Gift Buthelezi acting in her position until 15 February.
* The Softline Group, bought out by the Sage Group (UK) 10 years ago, will become known as Sage from 4 February.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by FoneWorx.

* Orascom Telecom acquired Wind Mobile (Canada).
* France Telecom made an additional investment in Orange Kenya, following its purchase of Alcazar Capital's stake, which now gives it a 60% share in the East African operator.
* LIBTELCO (Liberia) has launched its first fibre-optic cable.
* Libercell (Liberia) has been sold in order to pay off its debt to the Liberian government.
* Essam Gawish was appointed MEA business development manager of Nello, a tower manufacturer.

* Amazon acquired Ivona, a text-to-speech software company.
* American Movil bought CIE's media and advertisement division (Mexico), for $131 million.
* AT&T purchased Atlantic Tele-Network's US retail wireless operations, operated under the Alltel brand, for $780 million.
* AT&T acquired wireless airwaves and spectrum licences from Verizon Wireless for $1.9 billion.
* Belkin bought Cisco's Linksys, its home networking business.
* Cisco purchased Intucell, an Israeli software maker, for $475 million.
* Ericsson acquired the Devoteam Telecom & Media operations in France.
* Iron Mountain bought records management assets from Datastore and Data Technology Services.
* Yahoo purchased Snip.it, a social news start-up.
* BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, made an $80 million investment in Twitter.
* Samsung invested in Fixmo, a Canadian mobile security software vendor.
* A US trade panel, the International Trade Commission, which specialises in patent disputes, will review a potentially key decision in the patent fight between Samsung and Apple over smartphones and tablets.
* Atari has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* Excellent quarterly results from Cirrus Logic and Western Digital.
* Good quarterly numbers from LSI (back in the black), Micros Systems, Open Text, Samsung Electronics and VeriSign.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Apple, Check Point Software Technologies, F5 Networks, Google, Molex, Motorola Solutions and Symantec.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Altera, CA Technologies, Flextronics, Nokia (but back in the black), SanDisk, Texas Instruments and Xerox.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Avnet, with revenue up but profit down; IBM, with revenue down but profit up; Informatica, with revenue up but profit down; Juniper Networks, with revenue up but profit down; KLA-Tencor, with revenue up but profit down; Lam Research, with revenue up but profit down; Maxim Integrated Products, with revenue up but profit down; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; Netflix, with revenue up but profit down; Reliance Communications, with revenue up but profit down; SAP, with revenue up but profit down; and Saudi Telecom, with revenue up but profit down after a write-down on its investments in Cell C and Airtel.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Celestica and Polycom.
* Quarterly losses from Acer, AMD, AT&T, Diebold, LG Display, Logitech, Rambus, RF Micro Devices, Teradyne and Verizon Communications.
* The appointments of Robert Lento as CEO of Limelight Networks; Thomas Volk as CEO of Lumesse; Dan Schulman as chairman of Symantec; and Henry Wallace as executive chairman of Diebold.
* The resignation of Tom Swidarski, president and CEO of Diebold.

* International:
* Further developments regarding the privatisation of Dell, which has now attracted investment interest from Microsoft.
* Africa:
* The move by Tencent into Africa with its mobile messaging system.
* South Africa:
* The set-up of a call centre in Cape Town by Serco, a UK-based firm that has significant BPO capabilities, with more than 100 centres across 11 countries.

Look out for the set-up of a call centre in Cape Town by Serco.

* Samsung surpassed Apple as the top semiconductor customer in 2012, according to Gartner.
* The smartphone market grew 1.9% in Q4 2012, with Samsung displacing Apple as the number one vendor, and Huawei, Sony and ZTE filling the number three to five slots, according to IDC.
* Africa eLearning revenue will reach $512.7 million by 2016, 50% up on the $250.9 million figure for 2011, according to a new Ambient Insight report.
* Africa is the world's second fastest growing economy, after expanding 5% a year for the past two years, according to output from the WEF meeting in Davos.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.9% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.5%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+16.9%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-16.7%), EOH (+8.1%), FoneWorx (+10.3%), Labat Africa (-16.7%), MiX Telematics (+33.3%), Sekunjalo (+8.9%), Silverbridge (-46.2%), Stella Vista (-33.3%) and TCS (-50%)

Gartner's Executive Program Survey of more than 2 000 CIOs shows digital technologies are top priorities in 2013. It was conducted in Q4 of 2012 and included 2 053 CIOs, representing more than $230 billion in CIO IT budgets and covering 36 industries in 41 countries.

The survey showed CIO IT budgets have been flat to negative ever since the dot-com bust of 2002. For 2013, CIO IT budgets are projected to be slightly down, with a weighted global average decline of 0.5%. EMEA is the only region to show a slight growth of 0.4% in 2013.

Top 10 CIO business and technology priorities in 2013: