Forget me not, says Google

The EU ruling regarding the 'right to be forgotten', and the Carphone Warehouse/Dixons merger were the key international ICT stories last week.

At home, the financial numbers from Altron, Cell C and Datatec, as well as the latest Dimension Data acquisition, stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Good year-end figures from Altron, with revenue up 13.5% (back in the black); and from Cell C, with revenue up 14%, and subscriber numbers also well up (no EBDITA or profit figures available).
* Mixed year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue up 8.4% but profit down 50.7%.
* Dimension Data acquired Teliris, a cloud video managed services business.
* MB Technologies invested a majority stake in Cloud On Demand.
* SAS South Africa has opened a South African hosting centre in Johannesburg.

* Good year-end figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 16.4% and profit up 31.2%; and from Telecel Global, with revenue up 10% and EBIDTA up 51%.
* IBM has opened its mainframe Linux and cloud innovation centre in Nairobi.

Look out for the acquisition by AT&T of DirecTV in a deal that could be worth up to $50 billion.

* Acxiom bought LiveRamp, an advertising software start-up, for $310 million.
* Garmin purchased the assets of Fusion Electronics, a New Zealand-based provider of marine audio equipment.
* Google acquired Quest Visual, whose Word Lens appointment lets users translate signs with their smartphone camera.
* Intel bought the assets and talents of Ginger Software, related to its NLP technology and applications field.
* Intuit purchased Lettuce, an online inventory and order management app.
* Numericable acquired Virgin Mobile France, an MVNO, which comes close on the heels of its buy-out of SFR, France's second largest mobile operator. The deal was worth EUR325 million.
* Oracle bought Enkitec, an Oracle Platinum partner, in a move designed to expand the former's engineered systems capabilities.
* Yahoo purchased Blink, a mobile messaging start-up.
* Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail, two of the largest technology retailers in the UK, announced a £3.7 billion merger, in a deal that will see Sir Charles Dunstone, founder of the former, as chairman, and Sebastian James, CEO of Dixons, as CEO of the enlarged group.
* The European Court announced a 'right to be forgotten' ruling that could prove highly disruptive to Google.
* A settlement has been reached between Apple and Google (Motorola Mobility) regarding smartphone patent lawsuits.
* Very good quarterly figures from Tencent Holdings.
* Good quarterly numbers from Applied Materials (back in the black).
* Good year-end figures from NTT and Sharp (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Hon Hai Precision Industry, Quanta Computer and Trend Micro.
* Mediocre quarterly results from CA Technologies, Cisco, DoCoMo, Engility, Telecom Italia and Wind Italy.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Autodesk, with revenue up but profit down; Convergys, with revenue up but profit down; Rackspace Hosting, with revenue up but profit down; SingTel, with revenue down but profit up; and Tech Mahindra, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Acxiom, Asure Software and VimpelCom.
* Quarterly losses from Compal Electronics, Document Security Systems, NII Holdings and Overland Storage.
* A full-year loss from Sony and Weve, the UK mobile marketing and financial services company created by the UK's largest telecoms groups.
* The appointment of Andrew Ng, founder of Coursera, an online education company, to run the AI research labs of Baidu.
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq by MobileEye, an Israeli developer of collision-avoidance technology.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Zendesk, a software development company that provides software-as-a-service customer service platform for organisations

Worldwide:
* The worldwide SCM and procurement software market grew 7.3% in 2013 to reach a little over $8.9 billion, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide application infrastructure and middleware software revenue market totalled $21.5 billion in 2013, an increase of 5.6%, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide application infrastructure and middleware market revenue grew 5.6% in 2013 to reach $21.5 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide IT spending will increase by 4.1% this year, down from its previous forecast of 4.5%, as a result of emerging markets and mobile device slowdown, according to IDC.
* Worldwide client PC shipments reached 123.7 million units in Q1, up 5%, although tablet shipment growth slowed to 21%, with 50.8 million units, according to Canalys.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.6% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.5%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.6%
* S&P 500: Down a few points, but an all-time high of just over 1 900 was reached during the week
* FTSE100: Up 0.6% (during the week the index, at just over 6 873, was the highest reached since 1999)
* Top SA share movements: Altron (+14%), Ansys (+15%), Naspers (+9.2%), Pinnacle (-9.6%) and Prescient (+9.7%)

International:
* A possible new chairman of Samsung Electronics following the hospitalisation of Lee Kun-hee, the current chairman. The unofficial 'heir' is vice-chairman, Jay Y Lee, son of the current chairman.
* The acquisition by Qualcomm of Israeli chipmaker Wilocity.
* The acquisition by AT&T of DirecTV in a deal that could be worth up to $50 billion.
* The acquisition by America Movil of the shares (44.6%) of Telekom Austria that are available on the stock market, in a deal that could be worth $1.9 billion. The former already owns 26.4%, with the Austrian government holding 28.4%.
* The outcome of the merger talks between Orange and Bouygues, as part of consolidation taking place in the French telecommunications market.

Africa:
* The sell-off by Mobinil (Egypt) of its tower assets.

South Africa:
* Further news on the Neotel/Vodacom deal and Telkom's links with MTN.

African Business magazine has published its annual 'Africa's Top 250 Companies' listing. The major changes from a technology perspective are as follows:

* Naspers and MTN, at number five and six, have switched places from last year as the top technology companies in the list.
* Safaricom up, at 26 from 47.
* Sonatel (Ivory Coast) at 30, up from 41.
* Telkom SA at 65, up from 110.
* Reunert at 84, down from 65.
* Datatec at 151, down from 128.
* Onatel (Burkina Faso) at 174, up from 225.
* EOH at 195, up from 243.
* Celtel Zambia at 198, down from 156.

However, it is interesting to note Altron, Blue Label Telecoms, Net 1 UEPS Technologies and Vodacom have not been included in the list, but based on the main criteria being market capitalisation, they certainly should have been!