Verizon buys Terremark for $1.4bn

The international ICT market was dominated last week by the flood of quarterly results and just a handful of acquisitions.

At home, it was a quiet week, with Datatec's latest purchase taking much of the local ICT media space, together with the appointment of the new CEO of Neotel.

* Spescom shares were formally de-listed on the JSE.
* Datatec's Logicalis Group acquired Direct Visual, a UK-based supplier of video communications.
* EOH bought Belay, a Microsoft partner and a specialist IT services and solutions provider.
* Labat Africa announced a major restructuring of the group that will see it focus on three areas: telecommunications and technology, mining and pharmaceuticals.
* The appointments of Mark Barnard as acting CEO of IFCA Technologies; Colin Clarke as non-executive chairman of IFCA Technologies; Sunil Joshi as CEO of Neotel; Mitesh Patel as non-executive chairman of African Cellular Towers; and Brian van Rooyen as CEO of Labat Africa.
* The resignations of Chris Kruger, executive chairman of African Cellular Towers; Thoko Mokgosi-Mwantembe as non-executive chairman of Ifca Technologies; and Ajay Pandey as CEO of Neotel (contract not renewed).

Look out for a possible listing in the Middle East of MTN's international operations.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CA Technologies purchased Torokina Networks, a leader in delivering assurance management solutions to 3G, 4G and LTE communications service providers worldwide.
* Google acquired SayNow in a deal that could make Google Voice more interesting.
* Telit Communications, a wireless technology company, bought Motorola Solutions' machine-to-machine wireless communications subsidiary. The deal was worth $26 million.
* Verizon Communications purchased Terremark, a company that provides data storage services for large organisations and government agencies, for $1.4 billion.
* Lenovo and NEC announced a joint venture (51%/49%) to sell PCs in Japan, where NEC is the largest brand with an 18% share of the market.
* Tencent Holdings plans to launch an investment fund ($795.5 million) to invest in online gaming companies and other firms. Naspers has a major stake in Tencent.
* Excellent quarterly results from Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, the world's largest chip-packaging and testing company.
* Very good quarterly figures from Idea Cellular (India), Juniper Networks, Qualcomm, Riverbed Technology and VMware.
* Good quarterly numbers from Ariba, CGI Group, EMC, Kyocera, Logitech International, Motorola Mobility (back in the black), Motorola Solutions, Netflix, Sanmina-SCI, Software AG, Texas Instruments, United Microelectronics and ZTE.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amazon.com, Amdocs, Citrix Systems, Compuware, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics (back in the black) and Symantec.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Hynix Semiconductor, KDDI and NTT DoCoMo.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Acer, with revenue down but profit up; ADP, with revenue up but profit down; AT&T, with revenue up but profit down; CA Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Canon, with revenue up but profit down; Fujitsu, with revenue up but profit down; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; MicroStrategy, with revenue up but profit down; Nokia Siemens, with revenue up but profit down; Quantum, with revenue down but profit up; SanDisk, with revenue up but profit down; SAP, with revenue up but profit down; Verizon Communications, with revenue down but profit up; Xerox, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue down but profit up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Eastman Kodak.
* Quarterly losses from AU Optronics, LG Electronics, ST-Ericsson, Tellabs and VeriSign.
* A delay in the IPO for Skype until the second half of this year.
* An IPO filing from LinkedIn as a precursor to a listing on the NYSE later this year.

* International:
* The future of Quantum, a maker of storage systems, following a significant plunge in its share price after the release of its latest quarterly results.
* Africa:
* The future of Nitel following allegations that the tender winner is unlikely to be able to raise the necessary funding for the deal.

* South Africa:
* The launch of Red Bull Mobile, a virtual operator, on 8 February. This is Cell C's second virtual operator and joins Virgin Mobile in piggybacking on the Cell C network.
* A possible listing in the Middle East of MTN's international operations.

* The EMEA unified communications market will double by 2014 to over $16 billion, according to IDC.
* The worldwide mobile phone market grew 17.9% in Q4 2010, reports IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.1%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+27.3%), Amecor (+9.3%), Ansys (-14.5%), Cape Empowerment (-8%), Digicor (+8%), IFCA Technologies (-33.3%), PBT (-8.4%), Stella Vista (-16.7%) and TeleMasters (-15.6%)

Gartner has released the results of a worldwide survey of the top 10 business and technology priorities for CIOs in 2011. They are: please click here to see the results.