PayPal goes it alone

The splitting off of PayPal from eBay and a handful of small acquisitions, including ones by Facebook, Huawei and Microsoft, were the main events of the international ICT market last week.

At home, MTN SA appointed a new CEO.

* A negative trading update from Ellies.
* SA's Public Investment Corporation is looking to sell 25 million ordinary shares in Vodacom, representing approximately 1.7% of the company's issued share capital.
* Jasco disposed its 51.1% stake in M-Tec for R60 million.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by MiX Telematics.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Jasco.
* The appointment of Mteto Nyati as CEO of MTN SA.
* The resignation of Guy Kimble, MD of Metrofile.

* Helios Towers Nigeria will now be known as HTN Towers.
* RTI International, a non-profit research institute, and IBM's Africa research lab, have announced a partnership to deploy big data analytics and cognitive technologies to help transform development approaches in Africa and around the world.
* The appointment of Kash Pandya as CEO of Helios Towers Africa. He replaces co-founder and current CEO, Chuck Green, who will take on the role of executive chairman.

Qualcomm will be the subject of an EU anti-trust investigation.

* Anixter International acquired the Power Solutions segment of HD Supply for $825 million.
* Digital Realty bought Telx, a manager of data centre space, for $1.89 billion.
* Facebook (Oculus) purchased Pebbles Interfaces, a gesture recognition technology company.
* Huawei acquired the network management business of Ireland-based Amartus.
* Match Group, a subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp, bought PlentyOfFish, a dating site, for $575 million.
* Microsoft bought FieldOne, a field service management firm.
* A consortium led by Permira purchased eBay's enterprise business for $925 million.
* Synopsys acquired Silicon Vision's Bluetooth Smart IP.
* Telecom Columbus bought PrimaCom for EUR711 million, in a deal that brings together Germany's third and fourth largest cable operators.
* 888, an online gaming company, purchased Bwin.party Digital Entertainment for $1.4 billion.
* Microsoft and Rackspace Hosting have announced a strategic partnership to form a cloud alliance.
* PayPal Holdings has joined the S&P 500 index after the completion of the payment company's spinoff from eBay.
* CSC's new public sector spinoff Computer Sciences Government Services will be led by Lawrence Prior. Mike Lawrie will stay on as CSC's CEO and will also serve as executive chairman for Computer Sciences GS.
* Qualcomm will be the subject of an EU anti-trust investigation, after Brussels said it would probe whether the semiconductor company had abused its dominant market position and engaged in "predatory pricing".
* Very good half-year numbers from TSMC.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from WNS.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ADTRAN, Intel and TESSCO Technologies.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ASML NV, with revenue up but profit down; eBay, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue up but profit down; Honeywell, with revenue down but profit up; and Netflix, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from AMD, Fairchild Semiconductor and Quantum.
* The appointments of Steve Craddock as chairman of SeaChange International; and Ahmed Farroukh (ex-CEO of MTN SA) as CEO of Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), Saudi Arabia's second telecommunications operator.
* The resignations of Ellen Pao, acting CEO of Reddit; and Hisao Tanaka, CEO of Toshiba.
* The death of Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo.
* A planned IPO from Apptio, a maker of cloud-based software.
* An excellent IPO on the Taiwan Stock Exchange by Ezconn, a radio frequency connector and fibre-optic component maker.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Rapid7, a cyber security company.
* A poor IPO on the NYSE by Ooma, an Internet telephony firm.

EMEA/Africa:
* The MEA PC market suffered a year-on-year decline of 9.6% in the first quarter of the year, with shipments to the region totalling 4.3 million units, according to IDC. The research also showed portable PC shipments declined 9.4% to 2.7 million units, while desktop shipments fell 10% to 1.6 million units.
* MEA smartphone shipments are set to total 155 million units in 2015, after increasing 66% year on year during the first quarter to reach more than 36 million units, according to IDC.
* PC shipments in EMEA reached 17.2 million units in Q215, a 21.6% decline year on year, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to grow 2.5% in 2015, to $66.1 billion, according to Gartner.
* Derick Roberts, CEO of TruTeq Devices, predicts machine-to-machine communications, one of the fastest areas of growth in the technology industry, will notch up $90 billion or more in turnover by 2017.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.8%
* Nasdaq: Up 4.2% (highest-ever close during the week)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.8%
* S&P 500: Up 2.4% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 1.5%
* Nikkei225: Up 4.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 2.1%
* Shanghai: Up 2.1%
* Top SA share movements: AEEI (-14.4%), Altron (-6.5%), Ellies (-11.1%), Prescient (+7.5%) and Silverbridge Holdings (+7.5%)

International:
* A $23 billion bid by China's Tsinghua Unigroup, a chipmaker, for Micron Technology.

Africa:
* The possible acquisition of Telecel by the Zimbabwean government.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the Telkom and Vodacom deals.

Gartner recently released its predictions regarding worldwide device shipments by device type, 2014-2017 (millions of units), as follows: