EMC makes pivotal move

The international ICT world was dominated by several multibillion-dollar acquisitions again last week, including ones by EMC and Facebook.

At home, the DOC's accreditation of LAWtrust as the country's first Authentication Service Provider of advanced electronic signatures was the most significant local news of the week.

* A mixed trading update from SecureData.
* MB Technologies' Advanced Channel Technologies (ACT) acquired Digital Channel Solutions, a supplier of IT consumables, IT accessories and customised printing solutions.
* Altech ISIS has entered into a strategic partnership with Cognity SA in order to augment its skills set.
* The Department of Communications has given LAWtrust accreditation as the country's first Authentication Service Provider of advanced electronic signatures in line with the requirements laid out in the ECT Act of 2002.
* The switchover to digital TV has been delayed yet again to the latter half of 2014.
* The Boston Consulting Group has predicted that SA's Internet economy is expected to double from R51 billion in 2010 to R103 billion by 2016.

The switchover to digital TV has been delayed yet again.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Eton Towers purchased 400 towers from Warid Telecom Uganda. Only last week, Eaton Towers took over 300 towers in Uganda from Orange Uganda.
* SES and Samsung made an announcement about the first TV with an integrated satellite receiver that has been designed specifically for the African market.
* NigComSat has gone commercial as the Nigerian government takes delivery of the facility.
* Ibrahima Guimba-Saidou was appointed as head of SES's African operations.

* Amazon bought Kiva Systems, a developer of robots for warehouses, for $775 million.
* Broadcom acquired BroadLight, an Israeli developer of processors, for $230 million.
* EMC purchased Pivotal Labs, a provider of agile software development services and tools.
* Facebook bought 750 patents from IBM.
* Google acquired Milk and Digg's founder, Kevin Rose. Digg created Milk last year as a lab for experimenting with mobile application ideas.
* Lexmark purchased ISYS, a leader in high performance enterprise search and universal information access solutions.
* Lexmark acquired Nolij, a provider of Web-based imaging, document management and workflow solutions in the higher education market.
* NEC bought some of the operations of US telecommunications firm Convergys Corporation for $450 million.
* Symantec purchased Nukoma, a provider of mobile application management.
* Vista Equity Partners acquired UK banking software firm Misys for $2.01 billion.
* Zayo Group bought AboveNet, a company that offers fibre-optic connections and communications services in US cities and London, UK. The deal was worth $2.2 billion.
* Zynga purchased OMGPOP, the maker of 'Draw Something', for $200 million.
* Ericsson made an additional investment in its joint venture with LG Electronics, LG-Ericsson, with the result that the former now owns 75%.
* HP is merging its printer and PC divisions.
* Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra plan to merge, in a move that would create India's fifth largest IT and outsourcing group by revenue.
* Good quarterly numbers from Accenture.
* Good full-year figures from China Unicom and Foxconn International Holdings (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Jabil Circuit and Oracle.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Adobe, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Micron Technology and SAIC.
* The appointments of Bami Bastini as CEO of Meru Networks; Xi Guohua as chairman of China Mobile; Gideon Hollander as CEO of Jacada; and Bill Morrow as CEO of Vodafone Australia.
* The resignation of Tom Clear, co-CEO of Jacada (currently chairman and co-CEO).
* The retirement of Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile.
* An IPO filing in Singapore by Reliance Communications' undersea cable unit in a move that could raise up to $1.5 billion.
* IPO filings in the US by Exponential Interactive, a BI software company, and Novaled AG, a semiconductor and electronic component manufacturer.

* International:
* The future of Sharp, whose shares have lost more than a quarter to date this year.
* Africa:
* Vodacom's future in the DRC.
* South Africa:
* Possible further news from the Competitions Tribunal regarding Telkom.

* Worldwide PC shipments grew 1.8% in 2011, with a 5% growth expected in 2012, most of which will come from emerging markets, according to IDC.
* Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending is projected to total $38.9 billion in 2012, an 11.6% decline from 2011 spending of $44 billion, according to Gartner.
* According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016, South African mobile data traffic will reach 102.56TB (0.1 Exabytes) per month in 2016 - the equivalent of 26 million DVDs each month or 283 million text messages each second. In South Africa, mobile data traffic will grow 49-fold from 2011 to 2016, resulting in a compound annual growth rate of 118%.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: FoneWorx (-7.6%), Ifca Technologies (-12.5%), MiX Telematics (+32%), Poynting Antennas (+18.2%) and Sekunjalo (-8.1%)

Fast Company magazine has just published its annual listing of the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies. Not surprisingly, many technology organisations are featured in the list and the following are some of the entries:

* 1: Apple
* 2: Facebook ( a company in which Naspers has a stake)
* 3: Google
* 4: Amazon
* 6: Twitter
* 8: Tencent (a company in which Naspers has a stake)
* 22: Dropbox
* 30: LinkedIn