Comcast calls time on Time

Comcast's abandonment of its multibillion-dollar bid for Time Warner Cable, and Raytheon's acquisition of Websense were the main happenings in the international ICT market last week.

At home, Koos Bekker's return to Naspers and the trading update from MTN were the main local ICT stories.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from AEEI (was Sekunjalo), with revenue up 6.9% and profit up 81%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Datacentrix, with revenue down 1.3% but profit up 16.5%.
* A positive trading update from MTN.
* Canon SA acquired Oc'e SA.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Mix Telematics.
* The appointments of Koos Bekker as non-executive chairman of Naspers; and Tebogo Molapisane as CEO of Business Process enabling SA.
* The retirement of Tom Vosloo, non-executive chairman of Naspers.

* A 20% stake of MTN Rwandacell will be listed on the Rwanda market.
* The appointments of Allan Richardson as CEO of Vodafone Uganda; and Anwar Soussa as MD of Airtel Chad.

ZTE has been cleared of infringing an InterDigital patent.

* Arris Group acquired Pace, the UK set-top box maker, for $2.1 billion.
* BlackBerry bought WatchDox, a company that makes software for securing files.
* CenturyLink purchased Orchestrate, a database start-up.
* District Photo acquired Snapfish, HP's photo sharing service.
* Infosys bought Kallidus, a US-based digital and mobile commerce solutions provider, for $120 million.
* Liberty Global purchased Base, Belgium's third largest mobile operator, for EUR1.33 billion.
* NetSuite acquired Bronto Software, a cloud-based commerce marketing company, for $200 million.
* Raytheon bought Websense from Vista Equity Partners for $1.9 billion. Combined with its own cyber security unit, it will be hived off into a new company in which Raytheon will have a 19.7% stake. The new firm will be headed by John McCormack, CEO of Websense.
* Silicon Motion purchased Shannon Systems, a supplier of enterprise-class PCle SSD and storage array solutions.
* Synopses acquired Codenomicon, a Finnish software security company.
* Trend Micro has formed strategic alliances with General Mobile (GMobi) and VMFive, two Taiwanese start-ups.
* Synaptics is filing patent infringement cases against several companies regarding its touch sensing technology.
* ZTE has been cleared of infringing an InterDigital patent.
* A US judge has invalidated two patents owned by Intellectual Ventures that were to be used in a trial against Trend Micro.
* Comcast will drop its $45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable. As a result, Charter Communications may now bid for the latter.
* The 50th anniversary of Moore's Law on 20 April.
* Excellent quarterly results from Synaptics (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from LG Display, Mellanox Technologies (back in the black) and SK Hynix.
* Good quarterly numbers from ARM Holdings, F5 Networks, Lam Research, Manhattan Associates, Millicom Cellular International and ZTE.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amphenol, ASM International NV, Avnet, Broadcom, Check Point Software Technologies, eBay (back in the black), Equifax, Etisalat, Google, Infinera, Infosys, Kofax, Saudi Telecom, TE Connectivity, Texas Instruments and WNS Holdings.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Adtran, Altera, Celestica, IBM, Juniper Networks, KLA-Tencor, Lockheed Martin, Maxim Integrated Products, Netgear, Novatek Microelectronics, Xerox and Xilinx.
* Mixed quarterly figures from America Movil, with revenue up but profit down; AT&T, with revenue up but profit down; AVX, with revenue up but profit down; China Mobile, with revenue up but profit down; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; DST Systems, with revenue down but profit up; EFI, with revenue up but profit down; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue up but profit down; Facebook, with revenue up but profit down; FICO, with revenue up but profit down; Fortinet, with revenue up but profit down; Informatica, with revenue up but profit down; Logitech International, with revenue down but profit up; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; Omnicom Group, with revenue down but profit up; Qualcomm, with revenue up but profit down; Rambus, with revenue down but profit up; Rogers Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Sanmina, with revenue up but profit down; SAP, with revenue up but profit down; Syntel, with revenue up but profit down; TeliaSonera, with revenue up but profit down; VeriSign, with revenue up but profit down; Verizon Communications, with revenue up but profit down; VMware, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Cree.
* Quarterly losses from Amazon, NetSuite, Pandora, Qlik Technologies, SBA Communications, Unisys and Zhone Technologies.
* The retirement of John McAdam, CEO of F5 Networks (will become chairman).
* A proposed IPO on London's AIM market from Aries Telecom, a Malaysian telecoms group.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by Apigee Group, the provider of an innovative software platform that allows businesses to design, deploy, and scale APIs as a connection layer between their core IT systems and data and the applications with which their customers, partners, employees and other users engage with their business.

EMEA/Africa:
* PC shipments in EMEA reached 20.2 million units in Q2 2015, a 7.7% decrease from 2014, according to IDC. However, Lenovo showed very strong growth and significantly closed the gap on HP, the number one vendor.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach $354 billion in 2015, a 4% increase from 2014, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide application infrastructure and middleware software market revenue totalled $23.8 billion in 2014, an 8.8% increase from 2013, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.7% (highest-ever weekend close at over the 55 000 level)
* Nasdaq: Up 3.3% (highest-ever weekend close at nearly the 5 100 level)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.4%
* S&P 500: Up 1.8% (highest-ever weekend close at over the 2 100 level)
* FTSE100: Up 1.1%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.9% (highest weekend close this year)
* Hang Seng: Up 1.5% (highest weekend close this year)
* Shanghai: Up 2.5% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+10.4%), Huge Group (+11.1%), ISA (-7.1%), Labat Africa (-9.1%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+9.1%) and Pinnacle (+7.9%)

International:
* The possible sale of private equity-owned SunGard Data Systems.
* The acquisition by Vodafone of Cabovis~ao, the Portuguese cable business owned by Altice. The latter has to dispose of Cabovis~ao as part of its deal to acquire Portugal Telecom.

South Africa:
* The entry of a new MVNO, me&you mobile, into the local market in May.

Fortune magazine has published its listing of 'The World's 50 Greatest Leaders'. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
* 1: Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
* 25: Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
* 27: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com
* 29: Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi
* 44: Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber
* 48: Richard Lu, founder and CEO of JD.com