Nadella takes top spot

Satya Nadella's appointment as the new CEO of Microsoft; and Sony's disposal of its PC unit, dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the European acquisitions by Dimension Data and the probe into SAPO were the main local stories.

* Very good interim figures from Adapt IT, with revenue up 36.3% and profit up 66.6%.
* Good interim numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 16.9% and profit up 158.5%.
* Satisfactory Q3 numbers from Mix Telematics, with revenue up 3.8% and profit up 51.7%.
* Positive trading updates from ISA, Metrofile, Mustek and Vodacom Group.
* MICROmega Holdings acquired 56.67% of USC Metering for R39.7 million.
* NTT (Dimension Data) bought certain subsidiaries in Europe of NextiraOne, a global communications services and business solutions provider.
* Altron (Powertech) has disposed of its 50% stake in its joint venture with Tridonic South Africa.
* BMW has opened a SAP competency centre in SA.
* Lebo Masekela has acquired a 25% (+1) stake in Parsec, a subsidiary of Parsec Holdings.
* The Special Investigation Unit will undertake a special probe into the affairs of SAPO.
* Lulama Mokhobo resigned as CEO of the SABC.

* Microsoft has said that through its 4Afrika initiative, five start-ups from Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda have received financial funding. They are Africa 118 and Kytabu from Kenya; Gamsole and Save & Buy from Nigeria; and access mobile LLC from Uganda.
* IBM is rolling out its Watson supercomputing system across Africa.
* Brian Herhily has been appointed CEO of Seacom.
* Mark Simpson resigned as CEO of Seacom.

A French court has ordered Google to display a notice on its Web site for its privacy breach.

* Alaska Communications purchased TekMatne, a managed IT services firm.
* Amazon acquired Double Helix Games, a game studio.
* Callidus Software bought LeadRocket, an innovative social engagement and digital marketing platform provider.
* China Huaxin purchased Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise business that supplies telecoms services to corporations.
* Entegris acquired ATMI, a semiconductor supplier, for $1.15 billion.
* Ericsson bought Azuki, a video delivery platform.
* Imperva purchased Incapsula, a cloud-based Web application security company; Skyfence, a cloud security gateway start-up; and the assets of Tomium Software, in a move designed to accelerate mainframe data security solutions.
* J2 Global acquired UK-based City Numbers, a global phone number provider.
* Japan Industrial Partners, an investment fund backed by Bain Capital and Mizuho Securities, bought the PC business of Sony for $490 million.
* LinkedIn purchased Bright, a data and insights company, for $120 million.
* Synopsys acquired Target Compiler Technologies, a company that provides tools to design and programme application-specific instruction-set processors.
* Telenav bought Skobbler, a developer of OpenStreetMap-based GPS navigation.
* Vodafone bought out the minority partners of its Indian operation for $1.6 billion.
* Google made a $750 million (5.94%) investment in Lenovo.
* Apple faces a $2 billion claim from IPCom, a German patent owner, regarding an infringement of a patent that gives emergency calls priority on mobile phones.
* Apple could face up to paying $840 million in e-book anti-trust claims.
* Cisco and Samsung have entered into a cross-patent agreement.
* Google and Samsung have entered into a cross-patent agreement.
* Google has settled its search row with the EU.
* The US has ended its probe of Samsung's use of essential patents.
* A French court has ordered Google to display a notice on its Web site for its privacy breach.
* Nokia and HTC have reached a settlement regarding their lawsuits, and have agreed to collaborate going forward.
* Excellent quarterly results from Tableau Software (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Akamai Technologies, Arrow Electronics, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Entegris, Fiserv, Sony (back in the black) and VeriSign.
* Satisfactory nine-month figures from Panasonic (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Alcatel-Lucent (back in the black), Anixter International, AOL, Atmel (back in the black), Dassault Systemes, Gartner, Genpact and Teradata.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Vodafone.
* Mixed year-end figures from Swisscom.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Belden, with revenue up but profit down; Bell Canada, with revenue up but profit down; Convergys, with revenue up but profit down; FIS, with revenue up but profit down; Imation, with revenue down but profit up (back in the black); Level 3 Communications, with revenue down but profit up; LinkedIn, with revenue up but profit down; NCR, with revenue up but profit down; Netgear, with revenue up but profit down; and Nice Systems, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from ARM Holdings, Imperva, KPN, Twitter and Yelp.
* The appointments of Kevin DeNuccio as CEO of Violin Memory; Barak Ellam as CEO of Nice Systems; Bill Gates as founder and technology advisor at Microsoft (was chairman); Satya Nadella as CEO of Microsoft; and John Thomson as chairman of Microsoft.
* The resignation of Zeevi Bregman, CEO of Nice Systems.
* A planned IPO in London this year by Manx Telecom, a company owned by two private equity groups and once, back in 1987, a subsidiary of BT Group.
* A planned IPO in New York next year by Accellion, a file-sharing company.
* An IPO filing from GoPro, a wearable camera maker.

International:
* The sell-off by IBM of its semiconductor arm.
* Further developments regarding the HP/Autonomy 'battle'.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding SABC, SAPO and Telkom.

South Africa:
* Overall security spending in SA is set to increase by 9.7% this year to total $149.54 million, according to IDC.
* In South Africa there are almost 11.8 million Facebook users; >5.5 million Twitter users; 4.7 million YouTube users; and 2.7 million LinkedIn users, according to World Wide Worx.

EMEA/Africa:
* By the end of 2018, half of the African population will be covered by LTE networks, according to ABI Research.
* IT market growth in the MEA region is now only forecast to be 4.6%, down from 5% previously, according to the latest forecast by IDC.
* The top 10 Internet countries in Africa are Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, SA, Sudan, Tanzania, Algeria, Uganda and Tunisia, according to the ITU and other sources.

Worldwide:
* Ninety million wearable computing devices will be shipped in 2014, according to ABI Research.
* The worldwide PC market grew 17.9% in Q4 2013, thanks to a surge in tablet shipments, according to Canalys. The top five places were occupied by Apple, Lenovo, Samsung, HP and Dell.
* Global tablet shipments are expected to drop 15%-20% sequentially in Q1 2014, according to Digitimes Research.
* Global demand for standard DRAM will grow 9.7% this year, according to Digitimes Research.
* Thirty percent of organisations will use biometric authentication for mobile devices by 2016, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.5%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.6%
* S&P 500: Up 0.8%
* FTSE100: Up 0.9%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (+9.9%), Amecor (+9.2%), Metrofile (+9.1%), Mix Telematics (-15.1%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+11.15%), Poynting Holdings (+23.6%) and Silverbridge Holdings (+29.5%)

The 'Motley Fool' published its list of 15 tech companies that will define 2014. The list, in alphabetical order, is:
* Aereo, a company that allows consumers to stream broadcast channels over the Internet;
* Amazon.com;
* Apple;
* Box, a competitor to Dropbox and a company expected to list later this year;
* Broadcom, a company whose claim to fame is that 99.98% of all data crosses a Broadcom chip;
* Google;
* InvenSense, a company creating chips for motion tracking;
* Line, a subsidiary of Naver, Japan's largest social network, and a company that plans to undertake an IPO later this year;
* Netflix;
* Nordic Semiconductor, a player focusing on ultra-low power wireless communications;
* Oculus VR, the creator of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset;
* Qualcomm;
* Snapchat, a peer company to WhatsApp;
* Sony; and
* Xiaomi, one of China's largest smartphone companies.