Dish makes dash for Sprint

In international news, Dish Networks made a $25.5 billion counter-offer for Sprint Nextel, and the Blackstone Group withdrew from competing for the privatisation of Dell.

At home, Telkom's deal with the Competition Tribunal regarding its fine, and the potential de-listing of Muvoni, stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* Very good interim numbers from Sekunjalo, with revenue up 26.5% and profit up over 100%.
* Satisfactory interim figures from Business Connexion, with revenue up 8% and profit up 0.6%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Datacentrix, with revenue up 9.2% but profit down 14.9%.
* A negative trading update from ConvergeNet Holdings. A
* A R70 million 50:50 e-learning joint venture between Business Connexion's Learning Solutions business and Atio's Netcampus business was announced.
* The Muvoni Technology Group has received an offer from Horizon Investments for all its shares, in a move that would see the company de-listed from AltX.
* Telkom SA will pay the R449 million fine imposed on it by the Competition Tribunal in August last year.

* Microsoft has invested $4.5 million on a new technology centre at its Bryanston head office, where customers can preview and use solutions put together by it and its partners.

* The US Supreme Court has limited the reach of US courts in claims seen as lacking sufficient connection to the US. This move is seen as a major victory for foreign multinationals and a positive move for MTN in its Turkcell lawsuit, which was put on hold almost a year ago, awaiting this ruling.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by FoneWorx.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Muvoni Technology Group.

* Altimo has made a $1.8 billion offer to buy out minorities in Orascom Telecom. The former already owns a controlling 51.9% stake of the latter, via VimpelCom, in which it has 47.9% voting stake.
* KT has withdrawn from the race to acquire a stake in Maroc Telecom.
* Kyle Whitehill resigned as CEO of Vodafone Ghana.

Telkom SA will pay the R449 million fine imposed on it by the Competition Tribunal.

* Altera acquired TPACK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Applied Micro Circuits.
* Arris bought Motorola Home, in a move that creates a premier video delivery and broadband technology company.
* Google purchased Behavio, a mobile sensor start-up company.
* Google also bought a fibre system in Provo, Utah.
* Intel acquired Mashery, a cloud-based manager of application programming interfaces.
* j2 Global purchased Backup Connect, an online backup provider in the Netherlands.
* Rogers Communications bought BlackIron Data, a pure-play provider of data centre and cloud computing services in Canada.
* Patent and lawsuit activity:
* A German court has denied Samsung's injunction requests against Apple regarding one of its 3G wireless patents.
* Dish Networks has launched a $25.5 billion counter-offer for Sprint Nextel. Softbank previously offered $20.1 billion for a 70% stake. Dish Networks is also willing to pay a $600 million breakup fee to Softbank.
* Eastman Kodak will sell some of its document imaging business assets for $210 million.
* Plantronics CEO Ken Kannappan will take a four-month medical leave of absence, and Pamela Strayer, CFO, will be acting CEO during this time.
* Good quarterly numbers from eBay, Google, HCL Technologies, Microsoft, SanDisk, Tata Consultancy Services, TSMC and Wipro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amphenol, SAP and Verizon Communications.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ASML, IBM, Intel and TeliaSonera.
* Mixed quarterly figures from America Movile, with revenue up but profit down; Millicom International Cellular, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from AMD, Cypress Semiconductor and Nokia.
* The appointments of Peter Wennick as CEO of ASML; and Kyle Whitehill as CEO of Vodafone Qatar.
* The resignations of Richard Daly, CEO of Vodafone Qatar; and Eric Maurice, CEO of ASML.
* A disappointing IPO on the NYSE by Intelsat.

International:
* Resolution of the Dell privatisation deal now that the Blackstone Group has ended its interest in the company, and a maximum 10% share deal has been agreed to with Carl Icahn.
* A possible sell-off of IBM's server business to Lenovo.
South Africa:
* Possible acquisitions by Datacentrix.

* Global business analytics services spending should see a 14.3% CAGR to reach an estimated $70.8 billion by 2016, according to IDC.
* Tablet sales are expected to grow 28% this year to reach $64 billion, according to ABI Research.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.7%
* Top SA share movements: Altron-P (-11.1%), Huge Group (-11.7%), Labat Africa (-10%), Metrofile (+12.9%), Muvoni Business Group (+77.8%), Sekunjalo (+8.8%), Stella Vista (-33.3%) and Telkom SA (-11.1%)

A new report from Gartner identifies the top 10 technology trends affecting the global energy and utility markets in 2013, as the industry faces significant challenges from ongoing environmental sensitivity, changing policymaker attitudes and consumer expectations.

The top 10 technology trends are (in no particular order):

* Social media and Web 2.0
* Big data
* Mobile and location-aware technology
* Cloud computing and SaaS
* Sensor technology
* In-memory computing
* IT and OT convergence
* Advanced metering infrastructure
* Communication technology
* Predictive analytics