Samsung smartphones A-okay

The international ICT market was extremely quiet last week, with Apple's failure to secure a US ban on some Samsung phones being one of the main stories.

At home, MTN's annual results and deal with Telkom SA; and the speculation regarding further events in the local telecommunications sector involving MTN, Neotel, Telkom SA and Vodacom, took centre stage.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Pinnacle Holdings, with revenue up 1.1% and profit up 9%.
* Good year-end figures from MTN, with revenue up 12% and profit up 26.3%.
* Mixed year-end figures from MICROmega Holdings, with revenue down 1.9% but profit up 632.4%.
* Barclays Africa Group invested (49%) in RainFin, a peer-to-peer marketplace.
* SecureData shares have been suspended from trading on the JSE.
* Business Connexion announced a reorganisation intended to accelerate the positioning of the group as a global player.
* EntrepreneurCountry has established a presence in SA.
* Huawei has opened its first store in SA.
* MTN and Telkom SA have signed a heads of agreement for the former to take over financial and operational responsibility for the roll-out and operation of the latter's radio access network.
* A new JSE cautionary by Telkom SA.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Poynting Holdings and Telkom SA.
* The appointments of Nolitha Fakude as chairman of Datacentrix; and Yolisa Phahle as CEO of M-Net SA.

* Business Connexion acquired Panabiz Nigeria, a managed print services company that was previously part of the Singapore-based Tolaram Group.
* Airtel and Safaricom bought yuMobile, which also operates under the name Essar Telecom, for $100 million.
* Goldman Sachs has joined an almost $500 million capital-raising by Nigeria-based IHS Towers, the continent's largest infrastructure company.
* Kerry Evans was appointed Quintica's MD of its African operations.

SecureData shares have been suspended from trading on the JSE.

* Shutterstock, a stock image and video service, purchased WebDAM, a provider of Web-based digital asset management software.
* Spotify acquired Echo Nest in a move that brings recommendation technology in-house, adding 'brains' to the former's streaming service.
* Westell Technologies bought Cellular Specialities.
* Yahoo purchased Vizify, a company that converts social media data into visualisations and videos.
* Apple has lost its bid for a US ban on Samsung smartphones.
* The Juniper Networks vs Palo Alto Networks patent case has been declared a mistrial.
* Very good quarterly figures from Finisar (back in the black).
* Good full-year figures from China Unicom.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Baidu.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Descartes, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Orange, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Ciena and Systemax.
* A full-year loss by VimpelCom.
* The departures of Tony Bates and Tami Reller, two senior Microsoft executives.
* A planned IPO in Tokyo later this month by Japan Display, a manufacturer of smartphone screens.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Varonis Systems, a company that provides an innovative software platform, which allows enterprises to map, analyse, manage and migrate their unstructured data.

South Africa:
* The South African IS outsourcing, managed services and hosted services market is expected to increase 10.9% this year to $2.8 billion and the cloud services market to $229.7 million, according to IDC.

EMEA/Africa:
* North African SMEs are increasingly turning to cloud and virtualisation in an attempt to replicate the benefits enjoyed by larger counterparts, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide tablet shipments grew 68% in 2013, with Android capturing almost 62% of the market, according to Gartner. Apple's market share dropped to 36% from 52.8%, but Samsung's share more than doubled to 19.1%.
* Global PC shipments will fall 6.1% in 2014, which is better than the 9.8% fall in 2013, according to IDC.
* Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenue increased 2.4% in Q4 2013, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1% (highest-ever weekend close at nearly 47 800)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.7% (highest weekend close this year at over 4 300)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.8%
* S&P 500: Up 1% (highest-ever weekend close at nearly 18 800)
* FTSE100: Down 0.8%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (-7.5%), Ansys (-11.8%), Datatec (+8.5%), Huge Group (+10.6%), Pinnacle (-10.2%), Poynting (+10.7%), Sekunjalo (-7.8%) and Silverbridge (+7.1%)

International:
* The outcome of the battle for Vivendi's SFR business, with Bouygues and Numericable leading the chase with bids nearing the EUR15 billion mark.
* The possible acquisition by Facebook of Titan Aerospace, a drone maker.

Africa:
* Zain increasing its presence in North Africa.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding MTN and Telkom; and Vodacom and Neotel.

The African Report recently published its annual 'Top 500 African Countries' listing (based on turnover) in which there are still no pure IT companies included from outside of SA. From a technology perspective, the following are noteworthy changes:
* Naspers now at number 20, up from number 30
* Mobinil (Egypt) now at 97, down from 88
* Telecom Egypt now at 103, down from 93
* Airtel Nigeria now at 107, up from 121
* Tunisiana now at 189, down from 179
* INWI (Morocco) now at 191, up from 205
* Econet Wireless now at 203, up from 226
* Pinnacle now at 204, up from 228
* BCX now at 205, up from 255
* Orange C^ote d'Ivorie now at 250, up from 302
* MTN C^ote d'Ivorie now at 281, up from 315
* EOH now at 304, up from 391
* Mustek now at 315, down from 294
* Orange Cameroun now at 319, up from 356
* Soci'et'e des T'el'ecommications du Mali at 396, up from 471
* Airtel Tanzania at 425, up from 491
* Airtel Zambia at 461, down from 344
* Office National des T'el'ecommunications (Burkina Faso) newly in at 462

I am currently overseas on business and therefore my next column will appear on 24 March, but will cover the intervening two-week period.