Bezos buys broadsheet

The main international ICT-related headlines last week included American Movil's (Carlos Slim) proposed acquisition of KPN; and Amazon's Jeff Bezos has acquired the Washington Post.

At home, Actis' acquisition of Paycorp, and the news regarding Dina Pule's misconduct were the main local stories.

* A full-year loss from Broadband Infraco, with revenue down 39.7%.
* A positive trading update from Mix Telematics.
* Actis, a global private equity firm, bought Paycorp Holdings, a local payment solution company, for R937 million.
* Altech's shares were suspended following its merger with its parent company, Altron.
* FireEye has opened a Johannesburg office, headed by Deon La Grange as Southern Africa region country manager.
* ICASA has published the Draft Local Loop Unbundling Regulations for public comment.
* Parliament has announced that the ex-minister of communications, Dina Pule, has been found guilty of all but one of the charges she faced and that she "wilfully misled" it during its investigation into her conduct.
* A new JSE cautionary by SecureData.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by Mix Telematics.

* Kenya will switch to digital broadcasting by 30 June 2014, with the first phase of the switchover commencing in December this year. The ITU requires all member states to migrate by 17 June 2015.
* Samsung has opened its third Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy in Africa, in Lagos, Nigeria. The first two were opened in SA and Kenya.
* Nicholas Nesbitt was appointed IBM's East Africa GM.
* Anthony Mwai resigned as IBM's East Africa GM (moving to IBM SA).

Dina Pule has been found guilty of all but one of the charges she faced.

* Accenture acquired ASM Research, an advanced information solutions and services provider.
* Amazon's Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million, in a deal that ends the Graham family's 80 years of ownership.
* American Movil has proposed a $9.6 billion acquisition of the remaining 70% of KPN it doesn't already own.
* American Tower purchased about 4 500 towers owned by NII Holdings in Brazil and Mexico, for $811 million.
* AOL bought Adap.tv, an electronic trading platform that helps companies advertise on video Web sites, for $405 million.
* MegaFon acquired Scartel, a mobile operator in Russia and the only one with a live LTE network, in a deal worth $1.18 billion.
* Nice Systems purchased Causata, a provider of Internet activity tracking software.
* TriQuint Semiconductor bought CAP Wireless and its Spatium Technology, which replaces travelling wave tube amplifiers in communications and defence systems.
* Carl Icahn made an additional investment in Nuance Communications, raising his stake to 16.03%.
* Samsung is appealing against the ITC ruling amid its patent war with Apple.
* Vodafone is suing Telecom Italia for EUR1 billion for abusing its dominant position in Italy.
* The Obama administration vetoed the ITC ruling against Apple and the banning of its imports into the US. This is the first time in more than 25 years that the veto has been used in this way, and is likely to cause significant impact on the various patent battles that are currently in progress.
* A ruling has allowed Apple to revive its patent claims against Google (Motorola Mobility) regarding an alleged violation of two of its iPhone patents.
* Orange and SFR face possible lawsuits from rival mobile networks over alleged anti-competitive practices between 2005 and 2008.
* Samsung has been found guilty of infringing on two Apple patents in some of its devices.
* Toshiba and SanDisk, which have a joint venture to make NAND flash memory, will build a $4 billion flash memory plant in Japan.
* Very good quarterly figures from Interactive Intelligence (back in the black).
* Good half-year figures from China Unicom.
* Good quarterly numbers from Cognizant Technology Solutions, j2 Global, Plantronics, Qualys (back in the black), Sapient and Trend Micro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Deutsche Telekom, Genpact, MegaFon, Telus, United Microelectronics and VimpelCom.
* Mediocre quarterly results from BMC Software, Nokia Solutions Networks (but back in the black), Nvidia, Swisscom and Windstream.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AOL, with revenue up but profit down; Avnet, with revenue up but profit down; BCE, with revenue up but profit down; Belden, with revenue up but profit down; CenturyLink, with revenue down but profit up; CSC, with revenue down but profit up; Molex, with revenue up but profit down; Rackspace Hosting, with revenue up but profit down; and Sykes Enterprises, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Diebold, Dish Networks, Groupon, Imperva, Novatel Wireless, Nuance Communications, Silicon Graphics, T-Mobile USA and Tableau Software.
* Eric Lefkofsky, one of the Groupon founders, was appointed CEO of Groupon.
* A satisfactory IPO filing on the NYSE by YuMe, a digital advertising software maker.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Cvent, an event management software company.

* International:
* The possible sell-off to one of its larger rivals of Global Tower Partners, the largest privately-held operator of US cell towers.
* The possible privatisation of BlackBerry.
* The final outcome regarding the remedies/penalties arising from Apple's e-book price-fixing verdict.
* South Africa:
* The possible acquisition by Vodacom of Neotel. It is alleged the former is currently doing or has just finished due diligence on the latter.
* Further developments regarding the 'Pule guilty' verdict.

* China's handset makers account for 20% of the global smartphone market, with Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Yulong and ZTE being the top five vendors, according to Canalys.
* SA's IP traffic will quadruple between 2012 and 2017 at a CAGR of 31%, according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index Forecast.
* Worldwide tablet shipments grew 59.6% in Q2, with Apple taking a 32.4% market share (down from 60.3%) and Samsung 18% (up from 7.6%). Asus, Lenovo and Acer took the other top five places, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.8%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.5%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+18.1%), BCX-A (+8.2%), ConvergeNet Holdings (+10%), Huge Group (-16.7%), Mix Telematics (+20%), Poynting (+14.3%), SecureData (-8.1%), Telemasters (-11.4%) and Telkom (+9.4%)

IDC has recently published its 'black book' Q2 2013 figures - a summary of the numbers for SA follow. They show some decreases from the figures published for Q1 2013 earlier this year, and reflect the slowdown in growth the industry is experiencing.