Comcast living the dream

Comcast's acquisition of DreamWorks animation was the main event in the international ICT market last week.

At home, the negative trading update from Altron was the main story in a very quiet week.

* A mixed trading update from Datatec.
* A negative trading update from Altron.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by MTN and MTN Zakhele.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Altron.

* The appointments of Massimo Fatato as Red Hat's VP of its telecommunications business in EMEA; and Jean-Claude Geha as Ericsson's head of the sub-Saharan Africa region.
* The departure of Fredrik Jejdling, head of Ericsson's sub-Saharan Africa region (moves elsewhere within the company).

Worldwide spending on IOT security will reach $348 million in 2016.

* Chinese ICT provider CITIC Telecom CPC acquired European carrier Linx Telecom.
* Comcast bought DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion.
* Cypress Semiconductor purchased the IOT business and related assets of Broadcom for $550 million.
* Descartes acquired pixi Software, a German-based provider of technology solutions for e-commerce order fulfilment and warehouse management.
* Spain's self-styled fourth convergent operator Masmovil bought fellow MVNO Pepephone.
* Nokia purchased Withings, a French connected health start-up, for EUR170 million.
* OpenText acquired ANXeBusiness, a provider of cloud-based information exchange services to the US automotive and healthcare industries.
* Oracle bought Textura, a cloud-based payment management services provider, for $663 million.
* Rovi purchased TiVo, a video recorder pioneer, for $1.1 billion.
* SFR's telecom unit acquired the media assets owned by Patrick Drahi.
* Spotify bought CrowdAlbum, a US start-up that aggregates photos and videos from artists' performances shared on social media.
* An affiliate of Veritas Capital purchased Verisk Analytics' healthcare services business for $820 million.
* Ant Financial Services Group, Alibaba's financial spin-off, received $4.5 billion in private funding. This makes Ant Financial the third largest privately held technology company after Uber and Xiaomi.
* A strategic partnership has been formed between Accenture and Splunk, which integrates Splunk products and cloud services into Accenture's application services, security and digital offerings.
* Excellent quarterly results from Facebook.
* Very good quarterly figures from Amazon (back in the black) and Silicon Motion Technology.
* Good quarterly numbers from American Tower, Anixter International, AT&T, Barracuda Networks (back in the black), CACI International, Equifax, Mercury Systems, PayPal, Sabre, Sanmina, SGI (back in the black), Shenandoah Telecommunications, T-Mobile US (back in the black), Teradyne and Total Systems Services.
* Good year-end figures from GK Software.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Aspen Technology, ATN (back in the black), AVG Technologies, AVX, BCE, Cadence Design Systems, CGI Group, China Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Comcast, Entegris, Etisalat, Forrester Research (back in the black), Garmin, Iron Mountain, Juniper Networks, Netgear, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk, Skyworks Solutions, Telefonica Brasil, Telenor, Telesat (back in the black), TWC, VeriSign, WNS Holdings, Xilinx, Zain Group and ZTE.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Apple, Cabot Microelectronics, Cirrus Logic, Coherent, Cree, Flex, Insight Enterprises, Intelsat, InterDigital, Kyocera, Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Solutions unit, MicroStrategy, Millicom, NCR, PDF Solutions, SK Hynix, Silicon Labs, SPIL, Super Micro, Synaptics, Transcend Information, Vasco Data Security, Western Digital and Xerox.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Akamai Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; America Movil, with revenue up but profits down; Avnet with revenue down but profit up; Baidu, with revenue up but profit down; Cascade Microtech, with revenue up but profit down; CommScope, with revenue up but profit down; Diebold, with revenue down but back in the black; Digi International, with revenue down but profit up; eBay, with revenue up but profit down; Infinera, with revenue up but profit down; Intersil, with revenue down but back in the black; IPG Photonics, with revenue up but profit down; KLA-Tencor, with revenue down but profit up; KPN, with revenue down but profit up; L-3 Communications, with revenue down but profit up; Level 3 Communications, with revenue down but profit up; LG Electronics, with revenue down but profit up; Logitech, with revenue down but back in the black; Mobily, with revenue down but back in the black; Nanya Technology, with revenue up but profit down; Ooredoo, with revenue down but profit up; OpenText, with revenue down but profit up; Orange, with revenue up but profit down; PC Connection, with revenue down but profit up; Roper Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Telefonica, with revenue up but profit down; TI, with revenue down but profit up; Trimble Navigation, with revenue up but profit down; Tyler Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Ultimate Software, with revenue up but profit down; and Yandex, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Ingram Micro and LG Display.
* Quarterly losses from A10 Networks, Amkor Technology, Applied Micro Circuits, Bottomline Technologies, Brooks Automation, Cavium, Charter Communications, Cohu, Corning, Cypress Semiconductor, Datalink, Extreme Networks, First Data, FormFactor, Fortinet, Groupon, Harte-Hanks, Hutchison Technology, Lexmark, LifeLock, Limelight Networks, LinkedIn, Microsemi, MobileIron, NetSuite, NXP Semiconductor, Pandora Media, Qlik Technologies, Rovi, Seagate Technology, Shutterfly, Sohu.com, Sonus Networks, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Teligent, Twitter, UMC and Vocera Communications.
* The appointments of Yang Jie as chairman and CEO of China Telecom; and Sergei Soldatenkov as CEO of MegaFon.
* The resignations of Michael Brown, CEO of Symantec; Frederic Laluyaux, CEO of business software maker Anaplan; Thurman Rodgers, CEO and founder of Cypress Semiconductor; and Ivan Tavrin, CEO of MegaFon.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide spending on Internet of things (IOT) security will reach $348 million in 2016, a 23.7% increase from 2015 spending of $281.5 million, according to Gartner. Spending on IOT security is expected to reach $547 million in 2018.
* Financial services IT spending will reach almost $480 billion worldwide in 2016, with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 4.2%, according to IDC.
* Vendors shipped a total of 334.9 million smartphones worldwide in Q116, up slightly from the 334.3 million units in 1Q15, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 2.7%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.3%
* S&P 500: Down 1.3%
* FTSE100: Down 1.1%
* DAX: Down 3.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 5.2%
* Hang Seng: Down 1.9%
* Shanghai: Down 0.7%

International:
* America Movil selling its minority stake in KPN.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the future of Cell C.
* The outcome of the discussions between Prescient and Stella Capital Partners.

Barron's has recently published its 2016 list of its "top 30 CEOs". From a technology perspective, the list included:
* Jeff Bezos of Amazon (new in 2016 list);
* Reed Hastings of Netflix;
* Ma Hauteng of Tencent Holdings;
* Shantanu Narayen of Adobe (new in 2016 list);
* Larry Page of Alphabet;
* Brian Roberts of Comcast (new in 2016 list); and
* Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Failing to make this year's list (but who were in the 2015 list) were:
* Tim Cook of Apple;
* Masayoshi Son of SoftBank; and
* Yang Yuanging of Lenovo.