
The key stories in the international ICT market last week were the proposed privatisation bid for BlackBerry and a handful of IPOs on Nasdaq.
At home, it was a quiet week.
Key local news
* Good year-end figures from Poynting, with revenue up 15.8% and profit up 36%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from FoneWorx, with revenue up 8.9% and profit up 11%.
* A full-year loss from Digicore, although revenue up 2.2%.
* Positive trading updates from Altron, Datacentrix and Gijima.
* Sentech has been given a clean audit for the first time in over 10 years. In the year that closed in March 2013, it had a 20% rise in operating profit to R177 million.
* Zaptronix, which de-listed from AltX in April, has filed for business rescue.
* Frank Heydenrych, an ICT journalist and previous editor of ComputerWeek, died last week.
Key African news
* Orascom Telecom (Egypt) has changed its name to Global Telecom Holding.
* The appointment of Mark Nutt as Symantec's VP for EMEA partner management.
Key international news
Sentech has been given a clean audit for the first time in over 10 years.
* Alibaba acquired Kanbox, a Chinese operator of a cloud storage service that is similar to Dropbox.
* Applied Materials bought Tokyo Electron, in a move that creates an electronics manufacturer valued at about $29 billion. It will be one of the world's largest semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturers and will speed up the creation of new technologies for smartphones. The deal was worth $10 billion.
* Axiata Group, Malaysia's largest telecom company, purchased PT AXIS Telekom Indonesia for $865 million.
* eBay acquired Braintree, a payment gateway, for $800 million.
* The Canadian-based Fairfax Financial Holdings-led consortium (a shareholder) has proposed a $4.7 billion acquisition of BlackBerry, in a move that will take the latter private. This is a far cry from the $83 billion market capitalisation that BlackBerry 'enjoyed' a few years ago.
* KKR, a private equity company, bought the healthcare business of Panasonic.
* Telefonica made an additional $1.2 billion investment in Telecom Italia and its South American business, in a way that precludes the former having to launch a full takeover bid.
* The Marvell Technology Group has failed to overturn a $1.17 billion jury verdict regarding infringements of patents held by Carnegie Mellon University.
* The US ITC has handed down a preliminary verdict against HTC for the violation of Nokia patents.
* Alibaba has abandoned its plan to list in Hong Kong and is now looking at a US share sale.
* Good quarterly numbers from Jabil Circuit and Red Hat.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Accenture, Progress Software and Synnex.
* Quarterly losses from BlackBerry (also, revenue down 49%).
* Paul Galant was appointed as CEO of VeriFone.
* Disappointing IPOs on Nasdaq by Applied Optoelectronics, a provider of fibre-optic networking products; and Violin Memory, a maker of SSD storage.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by Covisint, a provider of cloud-based software that helps an organisation to connect, engage and collaborate with an external audience.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Montage Technology Group, a Chinese fabless provider of analogue and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions.
Look out for
* International:
* The possible merger of Alcatel-Lucent with Nokia.
* The possible resignation of Franco Bernabe, the executive chairman of Telecom Italia.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Telkom.
* Further developments regarding the report on the ex-Department of Communications minister, Dina Pule.
Research results and predictions
* Sixty-four percent of organisations have invested or are planning to invest this year in big data technology, according to Gartner.
* Smartphone shipments to Africa were up 21.5% in Q2, with Samsung dominating the market with a 52.1% share, according to IDC.
* Worldwide shipments of production printers were up 15% in Q2 to 13 000 units, according to IDC. MEA had a 16.6% growth, and Xerox remained the number one player.
Stock market changes
* JSE All share index: Up 0.6% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2% (highest close this year)
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.2%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+8.6%), ConvergeNet Holdings (+20%), Digicore (+9.3%), Gijima (+32.9%), ISA (-7.8%), Jasco (-14.7%), Mustek (+10.6%) and TCS (+100%)
Final word
Fortune magazine has published its annual listing of its '100 Fastest Growing Companies'. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
* 4: 3D systems, a maker of 3D printers
* 8: Photonics, a manufacturer of high-power lasers
* 19: Ultratech, a semiconductor equipment maker
* 26: Baidu, China's 'Google'
* 38: Apple
* 66: Ixia, a cyber security player
* 69: Cirrus Logic, a supplier of audio chips
* 73: Zygo, a maker of precision optical equipment
* 76: KLA-Tencor, a semiconductor manufacturer
* 84: Semtech, a semiconductor maker
* 90: CommVault Systems, a data management company
* 96: Rackspace Hosting, a data storage company
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