Google to bankroll African networks

A raft of small acquisitions, including ones by Adobe, Google and Yahoo (Tumblr), and the news from Google regarding the bankrolling of a wireless network serving rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, were the main stories in the international ICT market in the last two weeks.

At home, the potential Altron/Altech deal and the establishment of Agilitude, a new company that would also be the first Salesforce.com reseller in SA, took much of the local ICT headline space.

* Mediocre interim numbers from Reunert, with revenue down 8.2% and profit down 14.7%.
* Mediocre year-end figures from ISA, with revenue down 18.1% and profit down 26.5%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Vodacom, with revenue up 4.5% and profit up 29.6%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue up 4.2% but profit down 4.5%.
* A negative trading update from Muvoni Technology Group.
* Ansys acquired Tedaka Technologies, a supplier of transmission and networking products and services to the telecommunications industry, bringing the former back into the ICT fold.
* Pinnacle Technology purchased PrecisionICT and Modrac, the former being an engineering company focused on the design, manufacture and assembly of electronic enclosures and server racking under the Modrac and Envirorac brands.
* Altron has offered to purchase the entire share capital of Altech that it doesn't already own, 38%, for about R10.4 billion.
* MTN has been listed as the highest-ranking African brand in the latest Millward-Brown Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 survey.
* PriceCheck, a Naspers-owned application, has won the International Appointment of the Year award at the BlackBerry Live conference.
* Linux Warehouse has been appointed as an accredited distributor for SUSE South Africa.
* The establishment of Agilitude, a new technology company that also becomes the first reseller in SA for Salesforce.com. The company will be headed by Quinton Pienaar as CEO and chaired by Ken Jarvis.
* A new JSE cautionary by Ansys.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Labat Africa.
* Withdrawn JSE cautionaries by Altech, Altron and Huge Group.
* The appointment of Miriam Altman as Telkom SA's head of strategy.
* The resignation of Pierre Spies, CEO of Tarsus Technologies.

* Good year-end figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 16% and profit up 39%.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Telecom Egypt, with revenue up 1.4% but profit down 6.2%.
* A quarterly loss from Orascom.
* Google intends to bankroll the building of wireless networks in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia in a move that would serve many rural communities in both those areas.
* The GMSA has opened an office in Nairobi.
* Howzit MSN, one of Africa's largest portals, will launch dedicated versions of its site in Nigeria and Kenya.
* The Malawi government will establish a National Data Centre that will rationalise data storage and data processing facilities in that country.
* Zimbabwe's Twenty Third Century Systems has opened offices in Ghana and Nigeria.
* The appointment of Tim Humphreys-Davies as MD for Pinnacle Africa.

MTN is the highest-ranking African brand in the Millward-Brown Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 survey.

* Accenture acquired Hong Kong-based Acquity Group, a provider of brand e-commerce and digital marketing services, for $316 million.
* Adobe bought Thumb Labs, a mobile application developer.
* Altera purchased Enpirion, a power technology innovator.
* Amazon acquired Liquavista from Samsung, a company that focuses on electrowetting, which makes displays clearer in all lighting conditions and can show video without using much power.
* America Movil bought Start Wireless in a deal that will add 1.4 million customers to the former's US operation.
* AVG Technologies purchased PrivacyChoice, an online privacy firm.
* Blue Coat Systems acquired Netronome's SSL appliances.
* A Citric Capital-led consortium bought AsiaInfo-Linkage, the Nasdaq-listed telecoms billing and software group, for $890 million.
* Dish Network purchased spectrum owned by LightSquared, which is currently in bankruptcy proceedings. The deal was worth $2 billion.
* Genesys acquired SoundBite Communications, a specialist in cloud-based collections, payments and mobile marketing applications, for $100.4 million.
* Google bought Makani Power, an airborne wind turbine maker.
* Iron Mountain purchased three records management businesses owned by Information Storage Consolidation Company, namely Archives USA, The Document Bank and Safe Records Center.
* j2 Global acquired NetShelter, the biggest community of technology publishers.
* LinkedIn bought Maybe, a social polling start-up.
* Powermat purchased Finland's PowerKiss, which will create a giant in the field of wireless power technology.
* Sprint acquired Handmark, a mobile application developer and advertising company.
* Vista Equity Partners bought Websense, the Internet security specialist, in a deal valued at almost $1 billion.
* Yahoo purchased Tumblr, a blogging service and social networking site, for $1.1 billion.
* Yahoo also acquired Loki Studios, a mobile gaming start-up.
* Hon Hai Precision Industry made a 28% investment in Taifo, a Taiwanese high-speed network operator.
* Dell filed a complaint regarding violations of US anti-trust laws against at least six optical disk makers regarding price-fixing in the period 2004 to 2010.
* Nintendo won a US appeals court ruling decision in a patent case against Motiva.
* A Mexican court overturned a $2.7 billion payout against Yahoo over a contract dispute.
* A German court ruled that Google must heed requests to remove automatically generated search suggestions linked to people's names, if these are deemed to be defamatory.
* The ITC said Microsoft's Xbox didn't violate a Motorola Mobility (Google) patent.
* Cable & Wireless Communications and Columbus Networks will form a subsea joint venture.
* Microsoft's update to Windows 8, code-named Blue, which is due for release later this year, will be called Windows 8.1.
* Excellent quarterly results from Take-Two Interactive Software (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from ViaSat (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Tencent Holdings.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Cisco, Intuit, Lenovo (although profit up over 80%), MegaFon and VimpelCom.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Autodesk, CSC (back in the black), Dell, Engility, HP, Software AG and Vivendi.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Marvell Technology Group and Vodafone.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Analog Devices, with revenue down but profit up; Brocade Communications Systems, with revenue down but profit up; Hon Hai Precision Industry, with revenue down but profit up; NetApp, with revenue up but profit down; Qihoo 360, with revenue up but profit down; and Sapient, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Alvarion, Applied Materials, Aruba Networks, Bouygues Telecom, Compuware, Pandora Media and Salesforce.com.
* The appointments of Ali Agan as CEO of Kcell; Kevin Beebe as chairman of NII Holdings; Jean-Yves Charlier as CEO of SFR; Osamu Nagayama as chairman of Sony; Takashi Okuda as chairman of Sharp (was president); St'ephane Roussel as chairman of SFR (was CEO); and Kozo Takahashi as president of Sharp.
* The resignations of Simon Biddiscombe, president and CEO of Qlogic; Mikio Katayama, chairman of Sharp; and Shaikh Mohamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, CEO of Batelo (Bahrain).
* The dismissal of Phaneesh Murthy as CEO of iGate.
* The retirement of Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony.
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq from Covisint, the data management arm of Compuware.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Tableau Software, a software analytics company.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Marketo, a provider of a cloud-based marketing software platform that enables organisations to engage in modern relationship marketing.
* A new listing on UK's Aim market by Outsourcery, an independent cloud-based IT and communications services provider, in which Black Rock and a fund by George Soros have already invested.

International:
* The possible spin-off of Sony's entertainment arm, a move being pushed heavily by Daniel Loeb, whose hedge fund, Third Point, is Sony's largest shareholder with a 6+% stake.
* The possible investment by Softbank in Thailand's mobile operator, TOT.
* A possible US anti-trust probe into Google regarding alleged anti-trust activities.
* The buyer for Israel's Waze, with Google now also a contender, alongside Facebook.
Africa:
* The outcome of a fresh valuation sought by the Algerian government regarding its possible purchase of 51% in Djezzy, one of that country's mobile operators.
* The outcome of Altimo's bid for Orascom Telecom, following the latter's board recommendation that the offer is rejected.
* The winner in the battle for Vivendi's Maroc Telecom stake, for which Etisalat has made the top offer.
South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the Department of Communications, ICASA and Telkom SA.

* The worldwide IT operations and management software market grew 4.8% in 2012 to reach $18 billion, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide SCM software market grew 7.1% in 2012 to reach $8.3 billion, according to Gartner.
* IT spending was slightly below expectations in H2 2012 and Q1 2013, according to IDC. As a result, IDC predicts growth of 4.9% in constant currency for 2013, down from its previous forecast. Thus, IT spending will reach $2.06 trillion, and including telecoms services, ICT spending will reach $3.7 trillion.
* Android and iOS combine for a 92.3% (75%:17.3%) share of all smartphone shipments in Q1, with Windows Phone leapfrogging BlackBerry for the first time, according to IDC.
* BI/analytics is a top area for CFO technology investment through 2014, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide software market grew 3.6% in 2012 to reach $342.6 billion, although the emerging market sector grew at twice this number, ie, 7.2%, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.1%
* Top SA share movements: Altech (+35.4%), Datacentrix (-13%), Gijima (+28.6%), Huge Group (+22.6%), Labat Africa (+16.7%), MiX Telematics (-13.2%), Muvoni (+12.5%), Naspers (+12.6%), Sekunjalo (-13.3%) and TCS (+200%)

Fortune magazine has published its 2013 list of America's top 500 companies. The following technology companies were in the top 50:
* 6: Apple (was 17)
* 11: AT&T (same)
* 15: HP (was 10)
* 16: Verizon Communications (was 15)
* 20: IBM (was 19)
* 35: Microsoft (was 37)
* 49: Amazon (was 56)

Significant movements up included:
* Google at 55, was 73
* eBay at 196, was 228
* Broadcom at 327, was 344
* Cognizant Technology Solutions at 352, was 398

Significant movements down included:
* CSC at 176, was 162
* Motorola Solutions at 304, was 274
* Avaya at 477, was 442
* SanDisk at 487, was 430

New/re-entrants included:
* Level 3 Communications at 398
* Windstream Communications at 414
* Facebook at 482
* CA Technologies at 499, a re-entrant