ICT deals rack up

The latest ruling re the Apple/Samsung legal battle, and another investment by Alibaba were the international ICT highlights last week.

At home, the insider trading probe at Pinnacle, and the investment by Actis in CSH were the main stories.

* The acquisition by Actis, a pan-emerging market investor, of 60% of CSH, the holding company for Compuscan, Scoresharp and Compuscan Academy.
* The Financial Services Board announced an insider trading probe at Pinnacle.

* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Zain Sudan, with revenue up 4% in US dollar terms.
* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Orange's operations in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali, with revenue up 6%.
* Mediocre quarterly figures from Maroc Tel, with revenue down 0.4% and EBITDA down 6.8%.
* The appointment of Oliver Fortuin as head of BT's sub-Saharan Africa operations.

Apple bought LuxVue, a maker of next-generation LED displays.

* Apple bought LuxVue, a maker of next-generation LED displays.
* The $31 million acquisition by Brooks Automation of Germany-based DMS, a provider of automated systems to the semiconductor front-end market.
* Cirrus Logic's £278 million purchase of Wolfson Microelectronics, an audio chip designer.
* Google acquired Rangespan, a shopping analytics firm.
* Red Hat's $175 million purchase of Inktank Ceph Enterprise, a storage systems provider.
* Tibco Software acquired Jaspersoft, a provider of embedded BI and reporting software.
* The $1.22 billion (almost 20%) investment by Alibaba in Touku Tudou, China's largest video hosting site.
* Google faces an anti-trust lawsuit on US mobile Internet search.
* The announcement of an end to Novell's anti-trust claims against Microsoft that started 20 years ago, following a US Supreme Court decision to decline the former's appeal of a ruling in favour of the latter.
* The EU said Google's Motorola and Samsung will not be allowed to ignite new 'patent wars' against Apple over the use of essential mobile technology.
* A Californian jury has found Apple and Samsung guilty of patent infringements and, in a mixed verdict, has awarded $119 million in damages in Apple's favour, while Apple must pay Samsung $158 400. Apple was seeking $2 billion in damages.
* HP and Foxconn have launched a joint venture to make servers that are aimed at companies providing cloud computing services.
* Qualcomm is spinning-off its location awareness technology to a group of investors.
* Very good quarterly figures from Flextronics (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from American Tower, Bharti Airtel, Garmin and Micros Systems.
* Good full-year figures from Huawei Technologies.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Amdocs, Amkor Technology, Anixter International, Check Point Software Technologies, China Telecom, Corning, Diebold (back in the black), Fiserv, Harris, Level 3 Communications (back in the black), LG Electronics, Riverbed Technology (back in the black), Samsung and Verisk Analytics.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from FIS, Gartner, Iron Mountain, Panasonic (back in the black), Ruckus Wireless and ScanSource.
* Mediocre quarterly results from AU Optronics, CACI International, EE, Intelsat (back in the black), L-3 Communications, Motorola Solutions, Orange, Seagate Technology and Western Digital.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Akamai Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; America Movil, with revenue up but profit down; AVX, with revenue down but profit up; Belden, with revenue down but profit up; China Mobile, with revenue up but profit down; Equinix, with revenue up but profit down; NCR, with revenue up but profit down; Nokia, with revenue down but profit up; Pitney Bowes, with revenue up but profit down; and Plantronics, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Atmel (but back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from Bottomline Technologies, eBay, Forrester Research, Imation, Imperva, InterDigital, JDS Uniphase, LinkedIn, MicroStrategy, NetSuite, RF Micro Devices, SBA Communications, Silicon Graphics, Sprint, STMicroelectronics, Systemax, T-Mobile, Twitter and Yelp.
* A delayed IPO by Box.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to Gartner, public cloud services in the MENA region will grow 23% in 2014 to reach $629 million.

Worldwide:
* Gartner says the worldwide BI and analytics software market grew 8% in 2013 to $14.4 billion, with the top five players, SAP, Oracle, IBM, SAS Institute and Microsoft, sharing almost 70% of it.
* The worldwide smartphone market grew 28.6% in Q1 to 281.5 million units, with Samsung and Apple still dominating the market. Huawei replaced LG as the number three player, with Lenovo taking fourth position, says IDC.
* The worldwide integrated infrastructure and platforms revenue increased 45.6% in 2013 to $7.6 billion, according to IDC.
* Worldwide tablet shipments in Q1 grew 3.9% to 50.4 million units, with Apple and Samsung taking nearly 60% of the market.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.4% (the highest-ever weekend close and above the 49 000 level)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.2%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.9%
* S&P 500: Up 0.9%
* FTSE100: Up 2%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (-8.1%), Ansys (-7.5%), MICROmega Holdings (+7.8%), Pinnacle Holdings (-7.9%), Poynting Holdings (-13.5%) and Telemasters (+13.6%)

International:
* A possible acquisition by AT&T of DirecTV, a satellite provider.
* A possible buy back by Alibaba of a stake in Alipay.

South Africa:
* A possible tie-up between MTN and an Asian-based content provider re the provision of streaming movies.

The past few months witnessed enormous venture capital investments in start-ups; a raft of IPOs from US-based organisations and further afield; and significant merger and acquisition activity within the technology sector.

In this regard, the value of ICT deals in Q1 hit $174 billion, the highest level since 2006 and 65% up on the same period last year.

In addition, venture capital investment continued its upward trend with $10.74 billion being raised by US-based companies in Q1, the most raised since Q1 2001, with pure IT companies (excludes social media and other consumer Internet companies) accounting for 171 out of a total of 854 deals. The largest deal was Intel's $740 million investment in Cloudera.