Cable time for Comcast

Comcast's proposed $45.2 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable was the key international ICT news story last week, in the same week that also celebrated IDC's 50th birthday.

At home, Internet Solutions' acquisition of Antfarm was the main story in a quiet week.

* Internet Solutions acquired Antfarm, in a move designed to increase the former's audio and video streaming capabilities.
* AST has been placed in provisional liquidation.
* A new JSE cautionary by Poynting Holdings.
* The appointments of Deon Liebenberg as VP of Vodafone Global Enterprise Africa; and Lucky Masilela as CEO of the ZA Central Registry that manages the .co.za Internet domain (replaces Neil Dundas, who becomes COO).

* Satisfactory quarterly figures from the African operations of Millicom Cellular International, with a 9% growth in revenue.
* Chad is to privatise its state-owned telecommunications company, Sotel-Tchad, with 80% of the shares being offered for sale.
* The appointments of Aymar de Lencquesaing as Lenovo's president for its EMEA region; and Faycal Saile as Red Hat's GM for its META region.

Worldwide sales of smartphones surpassed those of feature phones in 2013.

* Alibaba bought AutoNavi, a digital mapping company, for $1.58 billion.
* Cadence Design Systems acquired the high-speed interface IP assets of TranSwitch.
* Canon purchased Molecular Imprints, a company that develops nano-imprint lithography systems.
* Comcast bought Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion, a move that will create the largest cable operator in the US.
* Deutsche Telekom acquired the remainder of its T-Mobile Czech unit it doesn't already own for EUR800 million.
* Microchip purchased Supertex for $394 million, in a move meant to bolster the former's business that supplies the medical, LED lighting, industrial and telecommunications industries.
* Rakuten (Japan) acquired Cyprus-based Viber Media, a call and messaging app provider, for $900 million.
* Sophos bought Cyberoam Technologies, a unified threat management company.
* Yahoo purchased Wander, a social diary company.
* Tata Teleservices was the only big name missing from the list of provisional winners in the recent Indian spectrum auction.
* Very good quarterly figures from Applied Materials.
* Good quarterly numbers from Lenovo.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Am'erica M'ovil, Amkor, Ciber, Equifax, Ingram Micro and Millicom International Cellular.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Cisco and HTC (but back in the black).
* Mixed quarterly figures from Brocade, with revenue down but profit up (back in the black); Diebold, with revenue down but profit up; Forrester Research, with revenue up but profit down; NetApp, with revenue down but profit up; Nvidia, with revenue up but profit down; Qualys, with revenue up but profit down; Rackspace, with revenue up but profit down; Sohu, with revenue up but profit down; and Telenor, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from CenturyLink, FireEye, Guardian Software, Liberty Global, Nuance Communications, Sprint and ViaSat.
* The appointments of Vinod Sawhny as CEO of Reliance Communications; Graham Weston as CEO of Rackspace Hosting; and Dennis Woodside as COO of Dropbox (was CEO of Motorola Mobility).
* The resignation of Andrew Bocking, head of BlackBerry's BBM unit.
* The retirement of Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace Hosting.
* IPO filings from Borderfree, a company that helps retailers transact with online customers residing in foreign countries; IIM Global, a provider of innovative technology solutions; and Q2 Holdings, a provider of secure, cloud-based virtual banking solutions.

International:
* The outcome of Vodafone's bid for Ono, a Spanish cable operator.
* A possible acquisition by Vodafone of the Irish fibre broadband network.
* Possible IPOs from DocuSign, an electronic signature software company; and Jawbone, a maker of headsets and fitness-tracker products. The latter is currently valued at $3.3 billion.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Net 1 UEPS Technologies and Telkom SA.

* Worldwide sales of smartphones surpassed those of feature phones in 2013, with 53.6% of overall mobile phone sales, according to Gartner.
* Android smartphone shipments grew over 40% in 2013, while that of iOS grew by only 6.7% and BlackBerry's OS shrunk by 77%, according to IDC.
* M2M services revenue will reach $20 billion globally in 2015, according to Juniper Research.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.8%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.9% (highest weekend close since the dotcom heights of 2000)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.3%
* S&P 500: Up 2.3%
* FTSE100: Up 1.4%
* Top SA share movements: Ellies (-7.3%), Gijima (-9.3%), Mix Telematics (+20%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+10%), Sekunjalo (+8.7%) and Silverbridge Holdings (-11.4%)

Fortune magazine has published its annual "100 best companies to work for in the USA" list. From a technology perspective, the following are interesting to note:
* 1: Google
* 2: SAS
* 7: Salesforce.com
* 20: Ultimate Software
* 29: Rackspace Hosting
* 32: Qualcomm
* 33: NetApp
* 55: Cisco
* 70: Autodesk
* 83: Adobe
* 84: Intel
* 86: Microsoft
* 90: Accenture
* 98: Hitachi Data Systems

Many of the big names are notable by their absence.