Patent lawsuits still in style

The international ICT market was dominated by a number of acquisitions last week, including ones from HP, IBM, NTT Communications and NXP Semiconductors. Also making headlines was Microsoft's announcement of a lawsuit against Kyocera over patent infringements.

At home, the appointment of HP SA's new MD and the rumours regarding a possible Cell C sale were the main local ICT stories.

* Excellent interim numbers from Poynting Holdings, with revenue up 105.3% and profit up 321.2%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Metrofile, with revenue up 7.7% but profit down 16.7%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from MTN Group, with revenue up 7% and profit up 22.5%.
* Nyalu Communications, a one-stop digital print service provider, acquired Xanadu Printing and Graphics, a litho print shop.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Altron and Sekunjalo.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Ansys.
* The appointment of Pieter Bensch as MD of HP South Africa.
* The resignation of Pieter Bensch as MD of Oracle SA.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from MTN Nigeria, with revenue up 12.1% and EBITDA up 8.2%.

Google will launch its own telecoms service in the coming months.

* Akamai acquired Xerocole, a recursive domain name system provider.
* Box bought Subspace, a data security start-up.
* eBay (PayPal) purchased Paydiant, a mobile payments company.
* HP acquired Aruba Networks, a wireless networking company, for $3 billion.
* IBM bought AlchemyAPI, a start-up that will help boost the Watson computing unit.
* Ingram Micro purchased Anovo, a provider of reverse logistics and repair within the technology marketplace.
* Kofax acquired Aia Holding, a provider of customer communications software.
* Mentor Graphics Corporation bought the business assets of Tanner EDA, a leading tool provider for the design, layout and verification of analogue/mixed-signal and MEMS integrated circuits.
* NTT Communications acquired e-shelter, a German data centre firm.
* NXP Semiconductors bought Freescale Semiconductor for $11.8 billion.
* PCH, a supply chain management company, purchased Fab.com, an e-commerce retailer.
* Samsung Electronics acquired US-based Yesco Electronics, a manufacturer of LED displays.
* Uber bought deCarta, a mapping start-up.
* Altice invested an additional EUR3.9 billion for Vivendi's 20% stake in Numericable-SFR.
* Microsoft is suing Kyocera over patent infringements regarding the latter's cellphones.
* Google will launch its own telecoms service in the coming months.
* Apple has replaced AT&T in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
* Very good quarterly figures from Veeva Systems.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Engility.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ASM International, with revenue down but back in the black; and Checkpoint Systems, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Finisar (but back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from Alaska Communications Systems Group, Ciena, GCI, Palo Alto Networks, CDI, Epiq Systems, JD.com, Stratasys and TiVo.
* The appointment of Mauricio Ramos as CEO of Millicom Cellular International.
* A disappointing IPO on the NYSE by MaxPoint Interactive, a BI and marketing automation software services company.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide sales of smartphones to end-users in Q4 2014 increased 29.9% from Q4 of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units, with Samsung losing the number one spot to Apple, according to Gartner.
* In Q4 2014, worldwide server shipments increased 4.8%, while revenue grew 2.2% from Q4 2013, according to Gartner. For 2014 as a whole, worldwide server shipments grew 2.2% and server revenue increased 0.8%.
* Factory revenue in the worldwide server market increased 1.9% year-over-year to $14.5 billion in Q4 2014, according to IDC. This was the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, as server market demand remained positive due to an ongoing enterprise refresh cycle coupled with continued infrastructure investments by cloud service providers. Worldwide server shipments increased 2.8% to 2.5 million units in 4Q14 when compared with the same year-ago period. For the full year 2014, worldwide server revenue increased 2.3% to $50.9 billion when compared to 2013. Worldwide unit shipments increased 2.9% to 9.2 million units, a record high.

* JSE All share index: Flat (but up marginally)
* Nasdaq: Down 0.7% (broke through 5 000 barrier for only the third time during the week)
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.5%
* S&P 500: Down 1.6%
* FTSE100: Down 0.5%
* Nikkei225: Up 0.9% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Down 2.7%
* Shanghai: Down 2.1%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (+7.8%), Digicor (-8.2%), ISA (-7.2%), Labat Africa (-11.1%), Mix Telematics (+27.8%), MTN (+7.5%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+10.2%), Pinnacle Holdings (-8.6%), Sekunjalo (+33.1%), Silverbridge Holdings (+16.7%) and Telkom SA (-10.7%)

International:
* A potential tie-up between Orange and Telecom Italia.

Africa:
* The outcome of the battle for control of Telecel Zimbabwe.

South Africa:
* The future of Cell C, which may include its disposal by Oger Telecom.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article regarding Europe's 2015 tech start-up landscape. This list includes:
* Fiverr, an Israeli player in the online services market;
* Kano Computing, a producer of toolkits that allow users to build a computer and write software easily;
* Klarna, a Swedish start-up in the online payments market;
* Lumus, a provider of wearable display technologies;
* SigFox, a provider of cheap, long-range radio technology that can be used to connect objects onto networks;
* SiSense, an Israeli BI company that makes software intended to run on regular computers with no additional hardware;
* Truecaller, the provider of a caller identity app; and
* Withings, a company that provides personal health connections to the Internet with devices such as WiFi-enabled bathroom scales and blood pressure monitors.