Alibaba invests in Snapchat

Alibaba's investment in Snapchat and the venture capital buyout of Blue Coat Systems were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, EOH's very good interim results came under the spotlight in the local market.

* Very good interim numbers from EOH, with revenue up 39.4% and profit up 37.7%.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from CompuClearing, with revenue up 4.2% and profit flat (marginally up).
* Mixed interim figures from Pinnacle Holdings, with revenue up 14.2% but profit down 24.8%.
* Mediocre interim figures from Telemasters, with revenue down 10.7% and profit down 4.3%.
* A new JSE cautionary by Amecor.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Labat Africa.
* BCX's UCS Technology Services subsidiary acquired Joint Venture Pumps Services, a product supply and support company focused on the petroleum industry.
* Sentech has concluded its digital terrestrial TV infrastructure installation process.
* The appointments of Jaco Cronje as MD of Katika Consulting; and Pierre Spies as deputy CEO of Pinnacle Group.

* Nigeria's teledensity has exceeded 100%.
* The president of Zimbabwe has approved the revoking of Telecel Zimbabwe's licence.
* The appointment of Elie Dib as Riverbed's MD for the Middle East and North, West and Central Africa.

Sentech has concluded its digital terrestrial TV infrastructure installation process.

* Amazon bought 2lemetry, a developer platform for sending, receiving and analysing data from Internet connected devices and things.
* Bain Capital purchased Blue Coat Systems for $2.4 billion.
* Facebook acquired TheFind, a social shopping app.
* Twitter bought Periscope, a live-video streaming start-up.
* Verisk Analytics purchased Scotland-based Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, for $2.8 billion.
* Alibaba made a $200 million investment in Snapchat.
* Four of HP's patents have been invalidated in its lawsuit against ServiceNow, which involved eight patents in total.
* Very good year-end figures from Adlink.
* Good quarterly numbers from VeriFone (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from QAD.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Comtech Telecommunications, with revenue down but profit up; and Weibo, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Ooredoo.
* Quarterly losses from Box, Systemax and Volt Information Sciences.
* The appointments of Jean-Yves Charlier (ex-SFR) as CEO of VimpelCom; and Dileepa Wijesundera as CEO of Sri Lanka Telecom.
* The resignations of Lalith De Silva, CEO of Sri Lanka Telecom; and Jo Lunder, CEO of VimpelCom.

EMEA/Africa:
* The MEA PC market grew 2.8% in Q4 2014, with HP, Lenovo and Dell retaining the top three positions, according to IDC.
* The external disk storage systems market in EMEA was up 1.3% year-over-year in terms of user value, according to IDC. In CEMA, the external storage market value grew 5% year-on-year to reach $677.1 million.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by -4.9% in 2015, a drop from the previous forecast of 3.3%, while growth projections for 2016 and 2017 were raised slightly, according to IDC. Fourth quarter 2014 (4Q14) results were 1.7% ahead of forecast, but economic and product changes will create a head wind in the short term. Total 2015 volume is projected at 293.1 million PCs, slipping a little further to 291.4 million in 2019. In value terms, the PC market reached US$201 billion in 2014, a decline of 0.8%, and is expected to fall another 6.9% in 2015, with smaller declines in subsequent years bringing the total to US$175 billion by 2019.
* Worldwide PC shipments are expected to reach 234.5 million units in 2015, a modest year-over-year increase of 2.1% from 2014, according to IDC. Although the outlook has been tempered, IDC still expects low but positive growth for the market in the years to come, as demand in the commercial sector increases, and as Microsoft slowly gains a foothold.

* JSE All share index: Down 3%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.6%
* S&P 500: Down 0.9%
* FTSE100: Down 2.5%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.5% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Down 1.4%
* Shanghai: Up 4.1%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (-8.4%), Altron-P (-18.3%), Ansys (-12.2%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-8.9%), Ellies (-13%), Reunert (-12.8%) and Sekunjalo (+7.7%)

International:
* The acquisition by Charter Communications of Bright House Networks, a cable company.
* The acquisition by Google of InMobi, an Indian mobile advertisement firm.
* The acquisition by Snapdeal of Freecharge (India), an online mobile recharge platform.
* The merger of 3 Italia and Wind (Italy).
* The merger of Hutchison Whampoa's and VimpelCom's Italian operations.

Africa:
* The possible sharing of Vodacom's Africa infrastructure with Bharti Airtel and Millicom.

South Africa:
* Further investments in Datacentrix by Pinnacle Holdings.
* The listing of MTN Zakhele on the JSE's BEE board.

Fortune magazine has published its 2015 list of 'Most Admired Companies'. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
* 1: Apple
* 2: Google (was number three)
* 4: Amazon (was number two)
* 20: Microsoft (was 24)
* 25: IBM (was 16)
* 26: (was 38)
* 30: Samsung Electronics (was 21)
* 40: (was 47)
* 47: AT&T (was 50)
* 49: Accenture (was 45)
* 50: Salesforce.com (a new entry)