IBM 'behaviour' to be probed

The international ICT world was dominated last week by quarterly results, the announcement of some planned IPOs and a handful of small acquisitions, including ones by Adobe, IBM, Juniper Networks and SAS.

At home, it was an exceptionally quiet week.

* Keith Jones led a management buyout of the South African operation of Avisen, which includes Harvey Jones and Inca, and is currently owned by its UK parent following a merger between Harvey Jones and Avisen in 2008.
* Nedbank made a R500 000 investment in Cape Town's Bandwidth Barn, a communications technology business incubator.
* GijimaAst has formally changed its name to Gijima.

* Mixed half-year numbers from Maroc Telecom, with revenue up but profit down.
* Eaton Telecoms has opened a branch in Tanzania, headed by David Hunter as its country manager.

Look out for the winner in the battle for the wireless assets of Infineon Technologies.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Adobe acquired Switzerland-based Day Software AG, an enterprise content management pioneer, for $240 million.
* Autodesk bought Illuminate Labs, a maker of lighting technology for game development.
* IBM purchased Storwize, a provider of data compression technology.
* Juniper Networks acquired SMobile Systems, a provider of smartphone and tablet security products, for $70 million.
* NXP Semiconductor bought UK-based Jennic, a developer of low power RF solutions, for $20 million.
* UK-based Pace, a set-top box maker, purchased 2Wire, a US-based provider of broadband solutions with a customer base that includes AT&T. The deal was worth $475 million.
* SAS acquired Vision Systems & Technology, a professional services company.
* Telefonica made a EUR7.5 billion investment in Vivo, the Brazilian mobile phone company, in a deal that sees a sell-off by Portugal Telecom of its shareholding.
* The European Commission has launched a formal probe into IBM's mainframe 'behaviour'.
* Panasonic plans to turn two subsidiaries, Sanyo Electric and Panasonic Electric Works, into wholly owned units.
* Qualcomm has formed a joint venture with India's Global Holding and Tulip Telecom.
* The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), a non-profit-making global alliance of 24 telecommunications operators, including AT&T, China Mobile and Telenor, will act as a wholesaler testing and certifying applications from third-party developers and sending them on to the participating operator stores where consumers can buy them.
* Excellent quarterly results from ARM Holdings, Broadcom, Infineon Technologies (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Arrow Electronics, Kyocera (back in the black), Logitech (back in the black), Panasonic (back in the black), Sanmina-SCI, Software AG and TSMC.
* Good quarterly numbers from ASMI, AU Optronics, Canon, Citrus Systems, Dassault Systemes, DST Systems, Hitachi (back in the black), Ingram Micro, Lexmark, LSI (back in the black), Plantronics, Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDI, SAP, Seiko Epson (back in the black), Sharp (back in the black) and Wipro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Ariba, BMC Software, Forrester Research, Fujitsu (back in the black), HCL Technologies, Iron Mountain, Konica Minolta, McAfee, Rogers Communications, Sanyo (back in the black), Sony (back in the black), Symantec, Tech Mahindra, Telefonica and Toshiba.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Diebold and LG Electronics.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ADP, with revenue up but profit down; BT Group, with revenue down but profit up; CGI Group, with revenue down but profit up; Fiserv, with revenue up but profit down; France Telecom, with revenue down but profit up; JDA Software, with revenue up but profit down; KPN, with revenue down but profit up; Motorola, with revenue down but profit up; Softbank, with revenue up but profit down; Unisys, with revenue down but profit up; Websense, with revenue up but profit down; and Wincor Nixdorf, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Epicor, Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications, NEC, Oki Electric, Renesas Electronics and Sprint Nextel.
* A planned IPO from NXP Semiconductor, the former semiconductor division of Philips Electronics that was bought by a private equity consortium, which included recently-listed KKR.
* A planned IPO filing, probably in London, from Digital Sky Technologies (Russia), a company in which Naspers now has a significant shareholding.
* A possible IPO by Freescale Semiconductor, the 2004 spin-off from Motorola, and which was taken private in 2006.

* International:
* The winner in the battle for the wireless assets of Infineon Technologies.
* A private equity investment in Nokia Siemens Networks.

* Africa:
* A possible bid for Telekom Serbia by LAPGreenN, a company owned by the Libya-Africa Investment Portfolio. The Serbian government, which holds 80%, is looking to sell off a 40% stake to the highest bidder.

* South Africa:
* A BEE deal from Simeka.

* Acer and Asustek were ranked second and sixth globally regarding Q2 notebook shipments, according to IDC. HP retained the number one slot, and Lenovo closed the gap between itself and number three player Dell.
* Server hardware revenue for public cloud computing will reach $718 million in 2014, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.2%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.7%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+11.1%), African Cellular Towers (+52.6%), Beget Holdings (-50%), Cape Empowerment (+47.1%), Dialogue Group (-14.3%), Huge (+40%), Labat Africa (+32.9%), Pinnacle Technology (+9%) and TCS (+33.3%)

The latest Fortune 500 Global listing had some interesting changes:
* The newcomers included Acer (Taiwan), Compal Electronics (Taiwan), Huawei Technologies (China), Sanyo Electric (Japan) and Time Warner Cable.
* No technology companies were displaced from the list (probably the first time ever this has happened).
* There were no movements in the top 20 from a technology company, either up or down (again an unusual situation).
* In the top 50 money losers list, the technology companies included (alphabetically) Alcatel-Lucent, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sanyo Electric, Sony and Sprint Nextel.
* The fastest growing companies regarding profit included Ricoh at number 18, Vodafone at number 30 and Huawei Technologies at 41.
* The fastest growing companies by revenue included Compal Electronics at 28 and Huawei Technologies at 48.