Justice prevails

Capgemini's $4 billion iGate acquisition, and the abandonment of the Tokyo Electron/Applied Materials deal by the US, dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the delisting of Gijima and the trading updates from Datatec and Telkom were the main stories of a short week locally.

* A positive trading update from Datatec.
* A mixed trading update from Telkom SA.
* The suspension of Gijima shares on the JSE. The company will voluntarily delist its shares on the JSE on 12 May.
* The trading of the shares of Poynting on AltX, now under the name 'Alaris'.
* Labat Africa acquired an unnamed logistics group for R627.5 million.
* A new JSE cautionary by Huge Group.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Labat Africa.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Labat Africa.

* A quarterly loss from Bharti Africa, with revenue down 12.6%.
* Microsoft has bought into Kenya's ICT master plan by signing an MOU with the Kenyan government.
* Telecel Zimbabwe, a unit of VimpelCom, has lost its mobile licence.
* The appointment of Ramy Hashem as MD of Alcatel-Lucent in Ghana.

Samsung Electronics overtook Apple to recapture the title of the world's top smartphone maker by volume.

* Capgemini acquired iGate, a US-based provider of applications and services, for $4 billion.
* Amdocs bought the assets of Comverse's business support systems unit for $272 million.
* A consortium of China-based private equity investors purchased OmniVision Technologies, a maker of digital imaging solutions, in a deal worth $1.9 billion.
* Flextronics acquired Mirror Controls, a producer of automotive glass and powerfold mirror actuators, for EUR457 million.
* Francisco Partners Management, a private equity firm, bought ClickSoftware, a provider of automated mobile workforce management software, in yet another privatisation move. The deal was worth $438 million.
* GoPro purchased Kolor, a virtual reality technology company.
* Iron Mountain acquired Recall Holdings, an Australian-listed data protection services provider.
* Twitter bought TellApart, an online advertising company, for $533 million.
* Ant Financial Services Group, which includes Alipay, made a 25% investment in Micromax, India's largest home-grown phone manufacturer.
* Ratan Tata, ex-chairman of the Tata Group, invested in Xiaomi, China's largest smartphone maker.
* Tencent invested in Glu Mobile, a mobile games developer.
* The US ITC found Microsoft has infringed mobile phone patents owned by InterDigital.
* Orange Switzerland has changed its name to Salt, following the sale of the company to Xavier Niel earlier this year.
* The US Department of Justice has scuppered the $30 billion proposed merger of Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials.
* Excellent quarterly results from Cirrus Logic, GoPro, InterDigital (back in the black), Orbotech and Skyworks Solutions.
* Very good quarterly figures from Apple and VASCO Data Security.
* Good quarterly numbers from Equinix, Idea Cellular, IPG Photonics, QLogic (back in the black) and Synchronoss Technologies.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Akamai Technologies, Amdocs, American Tower, Amkor Technology, Arrow Electronics, Aspen Technology, Bharti Airtel, Bharti Infratel, Cadence Design Systems, Entegris, Infosys, Level 3 Communications, Mercury Systems (back in the black), NetScout Systems, PC Connection, PMC (back in the black) and Teradyne.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Arris, AU Optronics, CACI International, Cyber, EE, Epiq Systems (but back in the black), Harte Hanks, Inotera Memories, Intelsat, ISSI, KPN, L-3 Communications, Lexmark, LG Electronics, MediaTek, MicroStrategy (but back in the black), NCR, Orange, Plantronics, and Samsung Electronics.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ADP, with revenue up but profit down; Anixter International, with revenue up but profit down; AVG Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Baidu, with revenue up but profit down; Brooks Automation, with revenue up but profit down; CDK, with revenue up but profit down; CGI, with revenue down but profit up; Corning, with revenue down but profit up; CSI, with revenue up but profit down; FEI, with revenue down but profit up; FIS, with revenue up but profit down; Flextronics, with revenue down but profit up; Garmin, with revenue up but profit down; Genpact, with revenue up but profit down; OpenText, with revenue up but profit down; Pitney Bowes, with revenue down but profit up; ScanSource, with revenue up but profit down; Verisk Analytics, with revenue up but profit down; Western Digital, with revenue down but profit up; Ultimate Software, with revenue up but profit down; UMC, with revenue up but profit down; Web.com, with revenue down but profit up; and Yandex, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Belden, Bottomline Technologies, Cavium, Cypress Semiconductor, Diebold, Emulex, FireEye, Forrester Research, Intersil, JDS Uniphase, LinkedIn, Macronix, MDC Partners, Nokia, RadiSys, Rovi, SGI, Sohu.com, STMicroelectronics, T-Mobile US, Telesat, Twitter and Yelp.
* A full-year loss from Sony.
* An IPO filing on the local Iraqi exchange from Zain Iraq.
* An initial IPO filing by Teladoc, an early player in the field of telemedicine.

EMEA/Africa:
* IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch) for public and private cloud in EMEA grew by 27% to reach $1.1 billion in revenue in 4Q14, and totalled around $4.1 billion for the whole year, with 28% growth over 2013, according to IDC. The cloud-related share of total EMEA infrastructure expenditure on server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch grew by three percentage points to exceed 17% in 2014.
* Smartphone shipments to the Middle East and Africa saw unprecedented year-on-year growth of 83% in 2014, according to IDC. Spurred by the increased availability of cheaper models and dual-SIM devices, the global advisory and consulting services firm announced that smartphones accounted for 41.9% of all mobile handset shipments to the region in 2014, up from 27% in 2013, with the overall handset market expanding 19.6% in volume year-on-year.

Worldwide:
* Global tablet shipments are expected to stay flat from a quarter ago and reach 49.31 million units in Q2 2015, but compared to the same quarter a year ago, the volume will drop close to 10%, according to Digitimes Research. Apple's iPad shipments are expected to decline to 9.8 million units, down 30% year-on-year.
* Worldwide tablet shipments recorded a year-over-year decline for the second consecutive quarter in 1Q15, according to IDC. Overall shipments for tablets and two-in-one devices fell to 47.1 million, a 5.9% decline from the same quarter a year ago.
* Samsung Electronics overtook Apple to recapture the title of the world's top smartphone maker by volume in the first quarter of 2015, according to Strategy Analytics. It said Samsung shipped 83.2 million smartphones worldwide and captured 24% market share in the quarter, down from 31% a year earlier, but better than Apple's 18%.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.7%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.3%
* S&P 500: Down 0.4%
* FTSE100: Down 1.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 2.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.3% (highest weekend close this year)
* Shanghai: Up 1.1% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+7.5%), Labat Africa (+140%) and Net 1 UEPS Technologies (-13%)

International:
* The possible takeover of Salesforce.com, maybe by Microsoft.
* The merger of Wind (owned by VimpelCom) and 3 (part of Hutchison Whampoa) in Italy.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the outstanding telecommunications local deals.

As the global, standard-setting association and advocate for outsourcing professionals and the organisations they support, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals annually produces the following research to help companies in their outsourcing decisions:
* The Global Outsourcing 100 - the annual listing of the world's best outsourcing service providers; and
* The World's Best Outsourcing Advisors - listing of the top outsourcing advisors and consultants.

Included in the first category were Aegis, Fusion BPO Services, HCL Technologies, HP Enterprise Services, Orange Business Services, Sykes Enterprises, Syntel, Tata Communications and Tech Mahindra Business Services Group.

Included in the second category were Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC Strategy & Quint Wellington Redwood.

Notable absentees from the list include BT Global Services, IBM Global Services, T-Systems and Wipro.