Foxconn wants Sharp

Foxconn's proposed acquisition of Sharp dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, MTN's interim payment in Nigeria stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Very good interim numbers from Blue Label Telecoms, with revenue up 24.7% and profit up 28.9%.
* A full-year loss from Stella Capital Partners.
* A positive trading update from EOH.
* A mixed trading update from Alaris.
* A negative trading update from Cognition Holdings.
* MTN acquired almost 400km of long-distance and metro fibres, connecting Pretoria and Polokwane, from Liquid Telecom.
* Naspers made an additional $250 million investment in Indian online travel venture ibibo Group.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by MTN and MTN Zakhele.
* The appointment of Duarte da Silva as non-executive chairman of the Huge Group.
* The resignation of Vincent Mokholo, non-executive chairman of the Huge Group (stays on as a director).

* MTN has paid Nigerian authorities $250 million (R3.8 billion) in a "good faith payment" as a move towards settling its hefty fine in the West African nation. The payment to the federal government of Nigeria is on the basis that it will be applied towards a settlement, once this settlement amount has been decided. In addition, MTN has withdrawn its suit against the Nigerian government.

MTN has paid Nigerian authorities $250 million (R3.8 billion) in a "good faith payment".

* BlackBerry has acquired UK-based cyber security consultancy Encription.
* Datacastle, a provider of enterprise endpoint backup, archiving and insights, bought the worldwide endpoint data protection assets of Seagate Technology.
* Taiwan's Foxconn is in the process of buying Sharp for $6.24 billion, marking the largest acquisition of a Japanese tech firm by a foreign company. However, the deal has been temporarily frozen following some new revelations by the latter.
* Microsoft purchased Xamarin, a four-year-old maker of software development tools.
* MKS Instruments acquired Newport, a provider of technology products and systems, for $800 million.
* Oracle bought Israeli start-up Ravello Systems, a player in the cloud computing market, for $500 million.
* The marketing arm of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten purchased ad-technology start-up Manifest Commerce.
* Verint Systems acquired Contact Solutions, a provider of real-time, contextual customer care solutions.
* Verizon Communications bought XO Communications' fibre-optic network business for $1.8 billion.
* German payment services provider Wirecard purchased smaller Brazilian peer Moip Pagamentos SA for EUR23.5 million.
* DST has formed a strategic partnership with Enlighten Operational Excellence, a provider of software and services designed to drive operational performance.
* IBM has formed a strategic partnership with VMware in a move aimed at accelerating enterprise hybrid cloud adoption.
* A US appeals court has overturned a $120 million jury verdict against Samsung, giving it a win in its patent battle against Apple.
* Excellent quarterly results from Fitbit.
* Very good quarterly figures from Baidu and DreamWorks Animation (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from AMC Networks, American Tower, Deutsche Telekom, Inovalon Holdings, Intuit (back in the black), NetEase and Verisk Analytics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from AVG Technologies, Cogent Communications (back in the black), Infoblox (back in the black), Ixia, Pegasystems, Photronics, SBA Communications, Shenandoah Telecommunications and TowerJazz.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ATN, Cablevision Systems, Convergys and HP.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alarm.com, with revenue up but profit down; Datalink, with revenue up but profit down; Ingram Micro, with revenue down but profit up; Intelsat, with revenue down but profit up; LoJack, with revenue down but back in the black; Motorola Solutions, with revenue down but profit up; Newport, with revenue down but profit up; Telefonica Brazil, with revenue up but profit down; and Windstream, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Iron Mountain.
* Quarterly losses from Autodesk, Daktronics, Envestnet, Frontier Communications, Lexmark, Mitel Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce.com, Splunk, Stamps.com, Telefonica, US Cellular and Zebra Technologies.
* The appointment of Braden R Kelly as chairman of FICO.
* The resignation of A George (Skip) Battle, chairman of FICO (remains as a director).

Worldwide:
* Almost three-quarters of the world's population will be connected to a mobile network by 2020, according to GSMA Intelligence, the research arm of the GSMA.
* Wearable device vendors shipped a total of 27.4 million units during 4Q15, besting 4Q14 levels by 126.9%, according to IDC. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 78.1 million units, up 171.6% over 2014.
* Global spending on robotics and related services are expected to grow at a CAGR of 17%, from more than $71 billion in 2015 to $135.4 billion in 2019, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.9%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.5%
* S&P 500: Up 1.6%
* FTSE100: Up 2.5%
* DAX: Up 1.3%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.4%
* Shanghai: Down 3.2%

International:
* The fate of Yahoo, with several companies looking specifically at its core businesses for acquisition.

South Africa:
* More news regarding MTN in Nigeria.

Gartner has highlighted the top 10 Internet of things (IOT) technologies that should be on every company's radar over the next two years.

Many IOT ecosystems will emerge, and commercial and technical battles between these ecosystems will dominate areas such as the smart home, the smart city and healthcare. Organisations creating products may have to develop variants to support multiple standards or ecosystems, and be prepared to update products during their lifespan, as the standards evolve and new standards and related APIs emerge.