Facebook fluff overshadows all else

Last week, the international ICT market was still dominated by the poor performance of Facebook's shares, despite several other significant acquisitions, like CGI Group's acquisition of Logica for £1.7 billion, and Verizon Communications' purchase of Hughes Telematics for $617 million.

At home, the news about Telkom SA and Korea Telecom was the most significant story.

* Very good interim numbers from Ideco Group, with revenue up 30.5% and back in the black.
* Satisfactory seven-month numbers from PBT Group. (Its year-end has changed to 31 March.)
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Trustco Group Holdings, with revenue up 22% and profit up 9%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Labat Africa, with revenue down 48.1% but profit up 95.4%; and Reunert, with revenue up 10% but profit down 37%.
* An interim loss from Zaptronix, with revenue also down.
* Full year losses from Huge Group, with revenue also down 25.8%; and TCS, although revenue up 3.6%.
* A positive trading update from TCS, although a loss is still forecast.
* A negative trading update from Mvelaserve.
* A mixed trading update from MTN, despite showing increased subscriber base figures of 5.2% for the first four months of 2012.
* The listing of the shares of African Cellular Towers has been suspended on AltX.
* Cabinet has rejected the proposed Telkom SA deal with Korea Telecom.
* RIM has opened a BlackBerry apps lab at the University of Pretoria.

RIM has opened a BlackBerry apps lab at the University of Pretoria.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Cambria acquired Zimbabwe's Celsys, a producer of security documents for financial institutions.
* France Telecom bought almost 94% of Mobinil (Egypt), completing the deal announced in April.
* Comztek has opened an office in Mauritius.
* The Ugandan government has handed back to Libya's Lap Green Networks the majority share it previously owned in Uganda Telecoms, which was 'confiscated' last year following the events in Libya.
* The appointments of Steve Bailey (ex-Virgin Mobile SA CEO) as CCO of Glo Nigeria; and January Zadak as HP's president for EMEA Enterprise Services.

* Ansys purchased Esterel Technologies, a French maker of embedded software to control electronics in aircraft, rail transportation and energy systems, for $53 million.
* CGI Group (Canada) acquired Logica for £1.7 billion, although the latter is the larger company by annual revenue.
* Data Storage, a cloud company, bought e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants, a provider of IaaS and infrastructure technology services and one of the 2012 'Top 100 Cloud Services Providers' in the annual rankings by Talkin Cloud.
* MTS (Russia) acquired Tascom, a Moscow-based telecoms provider, for $54.9 million.
* Verizon Communications purchased Hughes Telematics, a leader in the connected vehicle market, for $617 million.
* Am'erica M'ovil has offered to buy 27.7% of KPN, the Dutch telecoms provider.
* A judge in the Oracle/Google case has ruled that some code is not copyrightable, specifically APIs.
* Olympus has settled its dispute with its ex-CEO.
* Renesas has announced a restructuring plan, following its financial loss for the year that ended in March.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from QAD.
* Mixed quarterly figures from SAIC, with revenue up but profit down.
* The appointments of Bret Bolin as CEO of Misys; and Bill Veghte as COO of HP.
* A good IPO on UK's Aim market by Wandisco, a Silicon Valley software developer.
* An IPO delay by MegaFon, the Russian mobile phone operator, due to poor market conditions.

* International:
* The possible $1 billion acquisition of Opera Software, a provider of mobile phone software technology.
* Increased speculation as to the potential suitors for RIM, with Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle all now being linked with a possible buyout.
* A sell-off by Telefonica of its German division.

* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Telkom and its future directions.

* Worldwide server shipments grew 1.5% in Q1 2012, although revenue declined 1.8%, according to Gartner. IBM regained the number one slot from HP.
* The worldwide IT operations management software market grew 9% in 2011 to $18.3 billion, with IBM, CA Technologies and BMC Software retaining their top three positions, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide mobile payments transaction value will surpass $171.5 billion this year, a 61.9% increase over 2011, predicts Gartner.
* SA's Internet traffic is set to grow 10.6-fold between 2011 and 2016, a compound annual growth rate of 60%, according to Cisco's annual Visual Networking Index.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Down 3.2%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+25% before suspension), Ansys (+10.5%), Ifca Technologies (+16.7%), Jasco (+10%), Labat Africa (+14.3%), Poynting (+11.8%), Stella Vista (-25%), Telkom SA (-11.8%), Trustco (-8.3%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

Fortune magazine has just published its annual 'Fortune 500' of America's largest corporations. The following are some of the findings from a technology perspective:

* The highest ranked company was HP (number 10), followed very closely by AT&T (number 11).
* Newcomers included Frontier Communications (464), Motorola Mobility Holdings (206) and NetApp (474).
* Returnees included Brightpoint (463) and CDW (270).
* Displacements included Qwest Communications (acquired by CenturyLink).
* Top money loser was Sprint Nextel.
* Top regarding growth in revenue over one year and five years was CenturyLink.
* Top regarding growth in revenue over 10 years and top growth in profit over five years was Apple.
* Top regarding growth in profit over 10 years was Ingram Micro.
* Most profitable company was Apple.
* Biggest company by market value was Apple.
* Biggest company by equity was AT&T.
* Biggest company by employees was IBM.
* Top movers upwards were CenturyLink (334 to 171), Cognizant Technology Solutions (484 to 398) and Qualcomm (222 to 178).
* Top movers downwards include Motorola Solutions (116 to 274), Eastman Kodak (327 to 408) and Pitney Bowes (421 to 461).