Nokia buys Siemens stake

Nokia acquired Siemens' stake in its joint venture, which was the main international ICT story last week.

At home, the latest news regarding the continuing Holdsworth/Reunert 'spat' and the IPO filing in New York by Mix Telematics, stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* Very poor interim numbers from Telemasters, with revenue down 29% but back in the black (just).
* AdaptIT is amalgamating seven subsidiaries in a move designed to simplify its structure and reduce administrative and operational expenditure.
* Gilat intends to set up a local presence in SA in Q1 2014.
* Several new developments regarding the spat between John Holdsworth (including AppChat) and Reunert were announced, which could have serious implications. Another company, Black Sheep, created by 10 technology specialists who are all ex-ECN employees, are now being brought into the equation.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Ansys.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Mix Telematics.
* Mix Telematics has filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
* The appointments of Dhruv Chopra as MD and country manager of Net 1 UEPS Technologies India; and Nelly Manzini as acting chairman of SAPO.
* George Mothema retired as chairman of SAPO.

* IBM intends to establish a global delivery centre in Casablanca.
* LAP Green Networks (Libya) and Huawei have finally settled their dispute regarding unpaid bills for network equipment supplied to the former's subsidiary networks across Africa.
* Mark Ridley was named NetApp's new regional director for Africa, replacing Mike Styer, one of the many casualties of a recent shake-up in the local operation.

France's competition watchdog is probing Apple's resale practices.

* The founders of Bebo acquired the social media networking site they sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008, for $1 million.
* Ericsson bought UK-based Red Bee Media, in a move designed to boost its TV broadcast services division.
* Nokia purchased Siemens' 50% stake in its joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, for EUR1.7 billion.
* Samsung acquired Boxee, a TV DVR start-up.
* SanDisk bought Smart Storage Systems, a developer of enterprise solid state drives, for $307 million.
* Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm, purchased Intuit's financial services business that provides online and mobile banking software to banks and credit unions.
* Xerox acquired UK-based Customer Value Group, a software company that specialises in cloud-based accounts receivable and financial relationship management software.
* Yahoo bought Bignoggins Productions, a fantasy sports application specialist, for $1.025 billion.
* Yahoo also purchased Qwiki, a mobile application for creating videos in Apple's iPhone.
* Google made a 7% investment in Vevo, a music-video service.
* Panasonic invested (up to 13%) in Gorenje, one of the largest household appliance makers in Eastern Europe.
* Bharti Airtel made an additional investment in Qualcomm's India broadband venture, in a move that raises its stake to 51%.
* An announcement by a US court has resulted in authors losing their class status in the Google digital books case.
* Boston University is asking a court to stop the sales of the iPhone 5, iPad and Mac Book Air, claiming all those products infringe on a patent filed by one of its professors back in 1997.
* The report that IPCom, a patent holding company, has settled its claim against Deutsche Telekom in a deal valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.
* France's competition watchdog is probing Apple's resale practices.
* Sprint has finally shut down the Nextel network.
* Mediocre quarterly results from HTC.
* The appointment of Don Mattrick (ex-head of Microsoft's Xbox business) as CEO of Zynga.
* The resignation of Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga (stays on as chairman).
* The death of Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse.

* International:
A potential buyer for Emulex, a chipmaker.

* South Africa:
Further information regarding the rumours of bids for Neotel by MTN and Vodacom.

* Handset sales in SA are projected to reach $2.3 billion this year, up 13% from 2012, with smartphones being the main revenue stream, according to Fast Market Research.
* The South African consumer electronics market this year is expected to grow at 11.4%, according to Fast Market Research.

* JSE All share index: Down 1%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.2% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+21.1%), Business Connexion (+8.8%), Gijima (+20%), Huge Group (+8.3%), MiX Telematics (-8.6%) and SecureData (+9.1%)

Gartner has released its latest worldwide IT spending forecasts, which are down from those projected in the previous quarter. The latest figures are as follows: