Big companies make small buys

Microsoft gained its first win in the battle with Google over royalties, which made international news, along with a handful of small acquisitions, including ones by CA Technologies, Facebook, Google and IBM.

At home, the ongoing row involving the minister of communications and the full-year loss at Altech stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* An interim loss from ConvergeNet Holdings, although revenue up 16%.
* A full-year loss from Altech, although revenue up 4.7%.
* A positive trading update from Vodacom.
* MTN's group customer numbers grew 3.2% to 195.4 million in Q1, although in SA, its subscriber base was down 1.9%.
* Net 1 UEPS Technologies said AllPay had filed leave to appeal to the constitutional court regarding the recent ruling in favour of the former.
* A new JSE cautionary from AdaptIT.

* Bharti Airtel acquired Warid Telecom Uganda, the number three mobile operator in that country.
* Vivendi has received two firm offers for its 53% stake in Maroc Telecom. These are from Etisalat and Ooredoo (was called Qatari Telecoms Group).

A US federal judge has cut Google's Motorola royalty demand to Microsoft.

* Actian, a big data and analytics company, bought ParAccel, a start-up that specialises in analytics database software.
* Baidu acquired PPS Net TV, a Chinese online video firm, for $400 million.
* CA Technologies purchased Layer 7 Technologies, a provider of API management and security.
* Facebook bought Parse, a cloud services company that provides developers tools to use a unified back-end for their applications.
* Google acquired Wavii, a start-up behind a news summarisation application, for $30 million.
* IBM purchased UrbanCode, a company that specialises in automating the delivery of software and applications that run in the cloud.
* Software AG bought US-based LongJump, a cloud platform vendor.
* Toshiba acquired the chip production assets of Bridgelux, a producer of LEDs.
* ValueAct Capital made a $2 billion investment in Microsoft.
* The US ITC said Apple didn't violate a Google patent to make the iPhone.
* Digital International has settled a patent infringement lawsuit with US Ethernet Innovations.
* Nokia has been awarded an injunction in the Netherlands against HTC, which prevents the latter using microphone components made by STMicroelectronics in its HTC One phones.
* A US federal judge has cut Google's Motorola royalty demand to Microsoft.
* HTC said a German court has dismissed a complaint by Nokia regarding a patent infringement.
* A German privacy regulator has fined Google for a Street View data breach.
* Very good quarterly figures from Akamai Technologies, ARM Holdings, AVG Technologies, Idea Cellular and Yandex.
* Good quarterly numbers from Broadcom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Cree, Equifax, Hynix Semiconductor (back in the black), Maxim Integrated Products, Netflix (back in the black), Samsung Electronics and VeriSign.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Altera, Baidu, Check Point Software Technologies, China Mobile, DST Systems, Equinix, Etisalat, Juniper Networks, Micros Systems, Motorola Solutions, NTT DoCoMo, Rogers Communications, Telenet and Time Warner Cable.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Anixter International, Celestica, Canon, EE, France Telecom, KLA-Tencor, KPN, Lexmark, LG Display (but back in the black), LSI Logic, Netgear, Polycom, Sanmina-SCI (but back in the black), Websense (back in the black) and Zynga (but back in the black).
* Mixed quarterly figures from Amazon, with revenue up but profit down; Apple, with revenue up but profit down; AT&T, with revenue down but profit up; Avnet, with revenue up but profit down; Cirrus Logic, with revenue up but profit down; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue up but profit down; F5 Networks, with revenue up but profit down; Forrester Research, with revenue up but profit down; Informatica, with revenue up but profit down; Ingram Micro, with revenue up but profit down; L-3 Communications, with revenue up but profit down; LAM Research, with revenue down but profit up; LG Electronics, with revenue up but profit down; MetroPCS, with revenue up but profit down; Molex, with revenue up but profit down; Open Text, with revenue up but profit down; Qualcomm, with revenue up but profit down; Saudi Telecom (the real owner of Cell C), with revenue up but profit down; SMIC, with revenue up but profit down; Telenor, with revenue down but profit up; Texas Instruments, with revenue down but profit up; VMware, with revenue up but profit down; Western Digital, with revenue up but profit down; Xerox, with revenue down but profit up; and Xilinx, with revenue down but profit up.
* Mixed full-year figures from Kyocera.
* Very poor full-year numbers from Sony, although back in the black.
* Quarterly losses from Alcatel-Lucent, Clearwire, InterDigital, Logitech International, NetSuite, RF Micro Devices, Sprint Nextel, STMicroelectronics, Tellabs and Unisys.
* The appointments of Assaf Katan as acting CEO of Alvarion; Didier Lamouche as CEO of Oberthur Technologies; and Dmitry Shukov as CEO of India's SSTL, which operates under the MTS brand.
* The resignations of Fred Amoroso, chairman of Yahoo; Xavier Drihon, CEO of Oberthur Technologies; and Vsevolod Rozanov, CEO of SSTL (moving to Sistema, MTS's parent company).

International:
* The sell-off by NII Holdings of its 4 500 towers in Brazil and Mexico.
* The possible buy-out by Verizon of Vodafone's Wireless stake.
Africa:
* The winner in the battle for Vivendi's stake in Maroc Telecom.
South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the 'Pule' affair.

* Semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending in 2012 saw a 6.1% decline from 2011, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide mobile phone market grew 4% in Q1 2013 to 418.6 million units, with more smartphones shipped than feature phones for the first time, according to IDC. Samsung strengthened its number one position, with shipments totalling more than Nokia, Apple and LG combined, the number two, three and four players in the market.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.7%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.3%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+18.9%), Altech (-12.5%), Altron-P (+10.8%), Datacentrix (+8.1%), Digicor (-7.5%), ISA (-9.4%), MICROmega (+10%), Stella Vista (+50%) and Telemasters (-54.7%)

IDC has released the latest results from its worldwide semiconductor annual software tracker. The results show the worldwide software market grew 3.6% in 2012 to reach $342 billion, which was less than the growth rates experienced in 2010 and 2011.

The results are summarised below ($bn):