A is for Amazon

Saleforce's acquisition and the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data row dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, Naspers' sell-off of some Tencent shares (2%) was the main story of the local ICT market.

* A positive trading update from 4Sight Holdings.
* A negative trading update from ISA Holdings.
* A new JSE cautionary by Naspers.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Naspers.
* The appointments of Tebogo Leshope as COO of Sentech; and Dineo Molefe as MD of T-Systems' South African operations.
* The departure of Gert Schoonbe, MD of T-Systems SA.

* South Sudan's government has suspended the operations of its largest mobile telecoms operator Vivacell.
* The preferred bidder for 9mobile is Teleology, a group set up by 12 telecoms industry veterans; the reserve bidder is Smile Telecoms.
* The Zambia Information and Technology Authority has awarded the country's fourth mobile phone operator licence to Uzi Zambia, a company whose major shareholder is Unitel International Holdings, registered in The Netherlands.

* Ansys acquired Optis, a premier provider of software for scientific simulation of light, human vision and physics-based visualisation.
* KPMG bought the Vietnam and Singapore businesses of enterprise mobile app developer Rainmaker Labs.
* KLA-Tencor purchased Orbotech, an Israeli firm that develops ways to enhance manufacturing of electronic products, in a deal worth $3.4 billion.
* Ostertag acquired Mitel's DeTeWe Communications, the latter's direct systems integration business in Germany.
* Pandora bought AdsWizz, the global leader in digital audio ad technology.
* Czech billionaire Petr Kellner's PPF Group purchased Telenor's Central European operations for $2.8 billion. The deal will see the Norwegian incumbent exit Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, leaving it with operating units concentrated in Scandinavia and Asia.
* Salesforce.com acquired MuleSoft, a maker of software that automatically integrates disparate data, devices and applications to help companies' networks run faster. The deal was worth $6.5 billion.
* Upland Software bought InterFAX Communications, a leading provider of secure, cloud-based messaging solutions including enterprise cloud fax and secure document distribution.
* Zensar, an RPG Enterprises company (India), purchased US-based Cynosure, which focuses on providing Guidewire platform implementation services to property and casualty insurance carriers.
* Alibaba Group made a $2 billion investment in Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada.
* Baidu made a $160 million (11%) investment in the smart TV unit of Hong Kong-listed consumer electronic major Skyworth Digital Holdings.
* Amazon.com has become the second most valuable publicly listed US company, surpassing Google parent Alphabet for the first time.
* CACI has made a roughly $7.2 billion bid to buy CSRA in an attempt to break up the rival IT provider's sale to General Dynamics. The deal is about 10% higher, although General Dynamics has upped its bid as well.
* Vivendi SA is selling its 27% stake in French game maker Ubisoft Entertainment SA in a EUR2.01 billion deal, after its typical strategy of seeking creeping control failed to pan out. Under the deal, Ubisoft's founding Guillemot family will once again be Ubisoft's top shareholder and will be joined by Tencent Holdings (5%) and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (3.4%) as equity investors.
* Excellent quarterly results from Micron Technology and Tencent Holdings.
* Very good quarterly figures from OSS (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Accenture.
* Good year-end numbers from Accton Technology, China Mobile and Powerchip Technology.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Acer, Aten International, Epistar (back in the black), Gigabyte and Lite-On Semiconductor.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Mobile TeleSystems and Qisda, with revenue up but net income down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Phison Electronics, with revenue down but net income up.
* Quarterly losses from Cardlytics, Fusion Telecoms International, Intellicheck, Oracle, QAD and SITO Mobile.
* A full-year loss from Sino-American Silicon Products.
* The appointments of Mark Benjamin as CEO of Nuance Communications; Franco Bernabe as deputy chairman of Telecom Italia; Liang Hua as chairman of Huawei; Lucy Peng as CEO of Lazada; and Balesh Sharma as the CEO of the merged Vodafone India/Idea Cellular group.
* The resignations of Arnaud de Puyfontaine, chairman of Telecom Italia; Bill Halbert, CEO of KCom; Stella Handler, CEO of Bezeq; Chris Hsu, CEO of Micro Focus; Arnaud Poupart-Lafarge, CEO of Nexans; and Giuseppe Recchi, deputy chairman of Telecom Italia.
* The retirements of Bob Falconer, CEO of Gamma Communications; and Bill Nuti, chairman and CEO of NCR.
* The departures of Max Bittner, CEO of Lazada; and Ren Zhengfei, vice-founder and chairman of Huawei (stays on as CEO).
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq by Baidu's Netflix-style video streaming service iQiyi and video site Bilibili.
* An IPO filing from cloud software-services company Pivotal Software, a spinoff of EMC and VMware.
* An IPO filing for Singapore from Global Financial Technology.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Dropbox, a leading global collaboration platform that's transforming the way people work together.

South Sudan's government has suspended the operations of its largest mobile telecoms operator Vivacell.

EMEA/Africa:
* EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenue declined 9.5% year over year to reach $233.6 million in Q417, according to IDC. Total EMEA PBBA open systems vendor revenue decreased 7.3% year-on-year, with revenue of $216.7 million. Mainframe system sales decreased 30.2% year-on-year in 4Q17.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide spending on IOT security will reach $1.5 billion in 2018, a 28% increase from 2017 spending of $1.2 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide shipments for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets will grow to 68.9 million units in 2022, with a five-year CAGR of 52.5%, according to IDC. Despite the weakness the market experienced in 2017, IDC anticipates a return to growth in 2018 with total combined AR/VR volumes reaching 12.4 million units, marking a year-over-year increase of 48.5% as new vendors, new use cases, and new business models emerge.
* Worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018, an increase of 54.2% over the amount spent in 2017, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 2.9%
* FTSE100: Down 3.4%
* DAX: Down 4.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 5.7%
* S&P 500: Down 5.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 6.5%
* Nikkei225: Down 4.9%
* Hang Seng: Down 3.8%
* Shanghai: Down 3.6%

International:
* Desilu Studios going public in the US as a second stage of a proposed acquisition of Israeli technology start-up Vonetize.
* The outcome of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica personal data row that has seen the former's stock price drop significantly.

Fortune magazine recently published its 2018 '100 Best Companies to Work For' rankings. The list includes:
* 1: Salesforce.com (was number eight)
* 3: Ultimate Software (was number seven)
* 7: Workday (new entrant)
* 13: Intuit (was 13)
* 26: Adobe (was 60)
* 28: SAP America (was 59)
* 30: Nvidia (was 39)
* 37: SAS (was 15)
* 38: Cadence Design Systems (was 81)
* 39: VMware (was 42)
* 45: World Wide Technology (was 40)
* 48: Cisco (was 67)
* 60: Accenture (was 88)
* 64: Dropbox (new entrant)
* 68: Comcast (new entrant)
* 80: Autodesk (was 71)
* 82: Alliance Data Systems (new entrant)
* 84: Activision Blizzard (was 66)
* 86: T-Mobile US (new entrant)
* 100: AT&T (was 93)

Notable by its absence was last year's number one, Google.

As next weekend is Easter, my next column will appear on 9 April and will cover the intervening two-week period.