Cisco chucks its chief

The CEO change at Cisco and Equinix's bid for Telecity were the top stories in the international ICT market last week.

At home, another acquisition by Datatec and the launch of me&you mobile were the main local stories.

* Good Q3 numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 9.4% and profit up 45.3%.
* A positive trading update from Reunert.
* A negative trading update from Ellies.
* Datatec acquired Trovus, a UK-based provider of business insight solutions, professional services and managed services.
* Ellies will make a 'rights offer' worth R200 million.
* me&you mobile, a mobile virtual network operator that piggybacks on Cell C's infrastructure, made its debut.
* New JSE cautionaries by Digicore, Ellies and Morvest Business Group.
* The appointments of Willem Marais as CEO of Liquid Telecom SA; and Stergios Saltas as MD of Striata SA.

* Good year-end figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 13% and profit up 38%.
* Alcatel-Lucent and the Algerian Ministry of Post, Information Technology and Communications have signed a turnkey agreement for an undersea cable that will link Oran in Algeria to Valencia in Spain.

Equinix proposed a lb2.3 billion acquisition of Telecity, its UK-based rival.

* App Annie acquired Mobidia Technology, a mobile insights company, in a move the former hopes will create an entity that becomes the Nielsen ratings of the digital world.
* AVG bought Privax, a leader in the provision of personal privacy solutions.
* Ciena purchased Cyan, a provider of software and platforms for network operators, for $400 million.
* Cisco acquired Tropo, a provider of a cloud application programming interface platform.
* Equinix proposed a £2.3 billion acquisition of Telecity, its UK-based rival.
* Google bought Timeful, the provider of an automated time management app.
* Microchip Technology purchased Micrel, a fellow chip maker, for $839 million.
* O2 acquired Weve, a joint venture that also involved EE and Vodafone.
* Pitney Bowes bought Borderfree, a provider of online shopping services, for $395 million.
* Softbank made a $100 million investment in Banjo, a social-networking-meets-data-analytics company.
* A group led by China's JD.com made a $500 million investment in travel site Tuniu.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Motorola Mobility has been ordered to pay $10.2 million in a patent suit involving Fujifilm.
* Ericsson has filed legal patent suits in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands against Apple over its products, including the iPhone and iPad.
* General Electric is collaborating with Qualcomm and Apple, as it uses digital technology and the growing appetite for data to reinvigorate its 130-year-old lighting business.
* Hutchison Whampoa has brokered deals worth £3.1 billion to sell a third of the UK mobile business created by the merger of its 3UK business and Telefonica's O2.
* Slovakia's government has abandoned plans for an initial public offering (IPO) of Slovak Telekom after receiving a better offer from majority shareholder Deutsche Telekom.
* Excellent quarterly results from CyberArk Software (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Integrated Device Technologies.
* Good quarterly numbers from Alibaba, AMC Networks, Axcelis, Cincinnati Bell, Cognex, Cognizant Technology Solutions, EET Group, Electronic Arts, Infineon, Innolux, Qualys (back in the black) and Quantum (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Black Box (back in the black), Comcast, DIRECTV, Epistar, Fiserv, GCI, Ingram Micro, Newport, Nice Systems, Sabre (back in the black), Shenandoah Telecoms and SMIC.
* Mediocre quarterly results from CenturyLink, CommVault Systems, Harris, Motorola Solutions, Teradata and Windstream.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Acer, with revenue down but profit up; Advent Software, with revenue up but profit down; AOL, with revenue up but profit down; Atmel, with revenue down but profit up; Inovalon, with revenue up but profit down; Ansys, with revenue up but profit down; BT Group, with revenue down but profit up; CA Technologies, with revenue down but profit up; Diodes, with revenue down but profit up; Gartner, with revenue up but profit down; Insight Enterprises, with revenue up but profit down; Sykes Enterprises, with revenue down but profit up; J2 Global, with revenue up but profit down; Kulicke & Soffa, with revenue up but profit down; Microchip Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Nvidia, with revenue up but profit down; Vishay Intertechnology, with revenue down but profit up; and Vonage, with revenue down but profit up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from CDI.
* Quarterly losses from 3D Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, Avid, Checkpoint Systems, ClickSoftware, Cray, Datalink, EarthLink, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Guidance Software, Imation, Imperva, Interactive Intelligence, Ixia, JD.com, Kodak, Kratos, Lattice Semiconductor, Liberty Global, NII Holdings, Nuance Communications, RealNetworks, Rocket Internet, Spotify, Sprint, SunEdison Semiconductor, Systemax, Tableau Software, Tessco Technologies, Uninor, Varonis Systems, Veeco and Zynga.
* The appointments of Chuck Robins as CEO of Cisco; and Daniel Zhang as CEO of Alibaba.
* The resignations of John Chambers, CEO of Cisco (stays on as chairman); and Jonathan Lu, CEO of Alibaba (remains vice-chairman).
* The retirement of Steven Laub, CEO of Atmel.
* The death of Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey and wife of Sheryl Goldberg, COO of Facebook.
* A planned IPO from SunGard Data Systems, currently owned by a group of private equity firms.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Fitbit, a pioneer in wearable fitness tracking.

* EMEA/Africa:
* Banking and securities companies in the Middle East and North Africa will spend approximately $12.9 billion on IT products and services in 2015, an increase of 1% over 2014 revenue of nearly $12.8 billion, according to Gartner.

* Worldwide:
* Worldwide risk IT and services spending will reach $78.6 billion in 2015. It is expected to reach $96.3 billion by 2018 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.97% during the 2013-2018 forecast period, according to IDC.
* Total IOT platform revenue is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 32.2%, from EUR450 million in 2014 to EUR2.4 billion in 2020, according to Berg Insight.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.2%
* Nasdaq: Flat (marginally down)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.9%
* S&P 500: Up 0.4%
* FTSE100: Up 0.9%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.8%
* Hang Seng: Down 2%
* Shanghai: Down 5.3%
* Top SA share movements: AEEI (-7.7%), Amecor (+8.2%), Ellies (-20%), Huge Group (-6.9%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+15.9%), Stellar Capital Partners (-8.2%) and Telkom SA (-9.4%)

* International:
* Alibaba taking a 20% stake in India's Micromax Informatics.

* Africa:
* The ongoing saga regarding the operations of Telecel in Zimbabwe.

* South Africa:
* More on the future of the South African telecoms sector, including some new developments regarding Cell C.

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