Berkshire Hathaway takes chunk of Apple

Berkshire Hathaway's stake in Apple and a handful of small acquisitions were the main stories in the international ICT market last week.

At home, the poor results from Altron dominated the local ICT marketplace.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from Vodacom, with revenue up 7.5% and profit up 3.2%.
* A full-year loss from Altron.
* Positive trading updates from Cartrack Holdings and Huge Group.
* Datatec's Logicalis Group bought Lantares, a Spanish IBM Cognos partner and professional services provider specialising in business intelligence and data analytics.
* Masimong Technologies purchased 51.1% of Tellumat shares currently owned by Stella Capital partners, R180.4 million.
* Former Altech CEO Craig Venter launched ClickaBet, an online sports betting site.

* ARM Holdings acquired Apical, an imaging specialist, for $350 million.
* AT&T bought Quickplay Media, a digital streaming distribution platform.
* Digital Reality purchased eight data centres, owned by Equinix, for $874 million.
* FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn, acquired Microsoft Nokia's old feature phone business for $350 million.
* Fitbit bought the wearable payment technology assets from Coin, a Silicon Valley start-up.
* Nice Systems purchased inContact, the leader in cloud contact centres, for $940 million.
* Nordic Investors acquired U:Fon, a Czech telco owned by Air Telecom.
* SQUAN, a telecommunications infrastructure service provider, bought the assets of Strong Tower Communications.
* ST Telemedia purchased Tata Communications' 74% stake in its data centre business for $630 million.
* A US judge has sided with technology firms in a case over the Justice Department's gag orders.
* Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway took a $1.07 billion stake in Apple in Q1.
* Apple has established an app design centre in India.
* Very good quarterly figures from Salesforce.com and Tencent Holdings.
* Good quarterly numbers from Gigabyte and Take-Two Interactive Software (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Synopsys.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Iliad, MTS (Russia) and Vodafone.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Analog Devices, Cisco, Foxlink and Wistron.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Applied Materials, with revenue up but profit down; Brocade Communications, with revenue down but profit up; and Photronics, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from 8x8, Acxiom, Dell, Document Security Systems, FIH Mobile, Gilat Satellite Networks, Mentor Graphics, Mimecast, QAD, Top Image Systems; Vodafone Qatar and Westell Technologies.
* The appointments of Rashid Fahad Al-Naimi as acting chairman of Vodafone Qatar; Jack Chen as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise; James MacLeod as chairman of Sykes Enterprises; and Kazuhiro Yoshizawa as CEO of NTT DoCoMo.
* The resignation of Sheikh Khalid bin Thani al Thani, chairman of Vodafone Qatar.
* The departure of Kaoru Kato, CEO of NTT DoCoMo (remains on the board).

Former Altech CEO Craig Venter launched ClickaBet, an online sports betting site.

Worldwide:
* Global tablet shipments are expected to drop 4.6% sequentially to reach 42.84 million units in the second quarter, according to Digitimes Research. However, the shipment volume for the second quarter will drop only 7.9% on year, an improvement from previous quarters' over 10% drops.
* Global sales of smartphones to end-users totalled 349 million units in Q116, according to Gartner, a 3.9% increase over the same period in 2015, of which smartphone sales represented 78%.
* A combination of device releases, price reductions, and company rationalisations marked the first quarter of 2016 in the worldwide wearables market, according to IDC, with total shipment volumes reaching 19.7 million units, an increase of 67.2% from the 11.8 million units shipped in 1Q15.
* Intelligent systems at the edge will continue to grow as processors and connectivity are embedded into a plethora of previously unconnected devices, according to IDC. It forecasts that intelligent systems will log a CAGR of 7.2% from 2015-2020, with revenue exceeding $2.2 trillion in 2020.
* The global market for carrier software-defined networking will record strong growth in the coming years, reaching US$8.7 billion in 2020, according to IHS Technology. The market, including hardware, software and services, was worth $289 million and will record a compound annual growth rate of 98% over the 2015-2020 period.

* JSE All share index: Up 2%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.2%
* S&P 500: Up 0.3%
* FTSE100: Up 0.3%
* DAX: Down 0.4%
* Nikkei225: Up 2%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.7%
* Shanghai: Down 0.1%

International:
* A possible EUR3 billion fine for Google from the EU.
* A possible management buyout of O2 following the EU's veto of its take-over by Three.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the discussions between Stella Capital Partners and Prescient.

Fast Computer magazine has published its 2016 'most creative people in business' list for 2016. Included are:
* 2: Divya Nag, head of ResearchKit and CareKit at Apple, for moving Apple into the doctor's office.
* 7: Cindy Holland, VP of original content at Netflix, for offering Netflix viewers a lot more to binge on.
* 10: Amit Agarwal, VP and country manager, Amazon India, for extending Amazon's reach, one vendor at a time.
* 18: Sarah Schaaf, community director at Imgur, for creating and curating the most clickable content on the Internet.
* 19: Alex Chuing, founder and CEO of Giphy, for creating and curating the most clickable content on the Internet.
* 20: Adam Leibsohn, COO at Giphy, for creating and curating the most clickable content on the Internet.
* 21: Nick Bell, VP of content at SnapChat, for creating and curating the most clickable content on the Internet.
* 23: F'elix Lajeunesse, co-founder of F'elix & Paul Studios, for treating virtual reality as an art form.
* 24: Paul Rapha"el, co-founder of F'elix & Paul Studios, for treating virtual reality as an art form.