Dell goes to town

During the last two weeks, the international ICT market has been dominated by Dell's three acquisitions and Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram.

At home, Anglo American's major outsourcing deal with BT and the ongoing MTN/Turkcell 'spat' stole much of the local media ICT space.

The communications minister will review SA's ICT policies.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Positive trading updates from Business Connexion, Huge Group and Sekunjalo.
* A mixed trading update from Datacentrix.
* Negative trading updates from Altech, Altron and ConvergeNet Holdings.
* Atio acquired the Avaya assets owned by Business Connexion.
* Jasco bought Arc Telecoms, a converged voice and IP data telecommunications service provider.
* PBT Group purchased BI-Blue Consulting, a BI company specialising in SAP Business Objects.
* First Technology Holdings made an investment (a controlling equity stake) in Phoenix Software.
* The communications minister will review SA's ICT policies.
* The JSE will close its Africa board, which means Trustco Group Holdings, which contains a technology portfolio, will transfer to the main JSE board.
* Telemasters is withdrawing its decision to de-list.
* BT and Anglo American have announced a $220 million deal for the outsourcing of the latter's global managed networked IT services.
* Themba Khumalo was appointed group operations executive at MTN.

* Microsoft intends to open an office in Zambia.
* Stanley Similo was named interim CEO of Leo, the second mobile operator in Namibia.

* Arrow Electronics bought the Altimate Group, a European VAD of enterprise and midrange computing products, services and solutions.

* Citrix acquired Podio, a private cloud service company.
* Dell purchased Wyse Technology, the world leader in thin client units.
* Dell bought Clerity Solutions, a company that develops software that upgrades applications designed for conventional computing systems to make them suitable for cloud-based systems.
* Dell also acquired Make Technologies, a company that develops software and provides a service designed to upgrade conventional applications for modern, cloud-based systems.
* Facebook bought Instagram, a photo-sharing application developer, for $1 billion.
* Facebook purchased Tagtile, a mobile loyalty and rewards start-up.
* Google acquired TxVia, a mobile payments company.
* IBM bought Varicent Software, a provider of incentive compensation and sales performance management software solutions.
* Interactive Intelligence purchased Brightware, a provider of unified IP business communications solutions.
* Microsoft acquired 800 patents owned by AOL, in a deal worth $1.056 billion.
* SAP bought Syclo, a provider of mobile applications and technologies.
* Sophos purchased Dialogs, a provider of mobile management solutions.
* Tibco Software acquired LogLogic, a provider of a scalable log and security management platforms specifically designed for the enterprise and cloud.
* Fujitsu bought Toshiba's stake in its mobile joint venture.
* IBM made a 20% investment in Batista's SIX Unit in Brazil.
* Swisscom Ventures invested in Matrixx Software, a provider of network monitoring software.
* AT&T sold off a majority stake in Yellow Pages to private equity group, Cerberus Capital Management, for $950 million.
* The US SEC is examining Groupon's revision of its first set of financial results as a public company.
* The US's Department of Justice is suing Apple and five other publishers for conspiring to limit competition regarding the pricing of e-books.
* The EU has opened a probe into Motorola Mobility's patents.
* Sony has announced a complete restructuring of the group.
* Yahoo has announced a new three-unit structure.
* Good quarterly numbers from Google and Infosys.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Comverse Technology and HTC.
* Quarterly losses from Chimei Innolux and SMSC.
* Full-year losses from Sharp and Sony.
* The appointments of Art Landro as CEO of Cordys; and Kunimasa Suzuki as CEO of Sony Mobile Communications.
* The resignations of Sir John Buchanan, deputy chairman of Vodafone; Bert Nordberg, CEO of Sony Mobile Communications (becomes chairman); and Saud-al-Daweesh, CEO of Saudi Telecom, the largest shareholder of Oger Telecoms, owner of Cell C.
* An IPO filing from Palo Alto Networks, a maker of online security products.

* International:
* The acquisition by Turkcell of Bulgaria's Vivacom.
* The 'winner' of the bid for Elpida Memory, with private equity firms TPG and Hony Capital (China) now joining together as one of the potential bidders, although Toshiba has now formally withdrawn as one of the bidders.
* The acquisition by Deutsche Telekom of Telecom Columbus, a German regional cable company.
* Africa:
* The resolution of the Vodacom situation in the DRC.
* South Africa:
* Further developments on the MTN/Turkcell issue.

* Worldwide IT spending figures show mixed results for 2012, according to Gartner. The forecast is $3.7 trillion for 2012, only 2.5% up from 2011.
* Emerging markets will generate $1.22 trillion in IT spending in 2012, predicts Gartner.
* Worldwide BI, analytics and performance management software surpassed the $12 billion mark in 2011, reports Gartner.
* Global m-payments are expected to grow 97% per year over the next three years, reaching $945 billion by 2015, according to a report released by KPMG.
* Worldwide media tablet sales will reach 119 million units in 2012, a 98% increase from 2011, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide PV shipments grew 1.9% in Q1 2012 to reach 87.3 million units, according to Gartner. Lenovo stole the number two slot from Acer, which slid to number four, behind Dell. Shipments in EMEA grew 6.7%.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.4%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.6%
* Top SA share movements: FoneWorx (+13.6%), Huge Group (-8%), MICROmega (+10.2%), Sekunjalo (+10.5%), Stella Vista (+25%), Telemasters (+21.8%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

African Business magazine has published its 'Africa's Top 250 Companies' list, which is done using market capitalisation as its ranking criterion. Again, there are no IT companies listed from outside SA. Key technology rankings are as follows:

* 5: MTN
* 11: Naspers
* 12: Maroc Telecom
* 34: Telecom Egypt
* 44: Sonatel (Cote d'Ivoire)
* 58: Telkom SA
* 64: Reunert
* 71: Safaricom
* 73: Mobinil (Egypt)

It should be noted that there are several omissions and errors in the list, which I have discovered, including:

* Altech, having a higher market capitalisation than Altron.
* Several South African IT companies being omitted from the list, eg, BCX, Blue Label Telecoms, EOH, Net1 UEPS Technologies, Pinnacle Technology and Vodacom.