LinkedIn careers ahead

The international ICT market was quiet last week with a handful of small acquisitions, including ones by Ericsson and LinkedIn.

At home, the launch of Newland ID was the main event.

* Positive trading updates from Ansys, Datatec and ISA.
* SAP has issued 19.5% of equity to the SAP SA Empowerment Trust, bringing SAP SA's black ownership up to 30%.
* The Comesa Competition Commission has approved the Telkom SA/BCX merger.
* Newland ID unveiled a local company. It is a subsidiary of Newland Europe, which in turn is a subsidiary of China-based of Fujian Newland Computer. The former is a sister company to Tactile Technologies.
* The appointments of Kevin Attard as interim country manager for Oracle SA; Setumo Mohapi (CEO of Sentech) as CEO of SITA; and Keith Vieira as CEO of Amecor.
* The resignation of Dereck Alexander, CEO of Amecor.
* The departure of Sithembiso Nomvalo, CEO of SITA.

* The appointment of Richard Edat as Alcatel-Lucent's MD for Nigeria.

* Diebold acquired Phoenix Interactive Design in a move meant to propel the former into a services-led software company.
* Ericsson bought the telecoms business of China-based Sunrise Technology.
* LinkedIn purchased Careerify, a Canadian start-up that will help automate the referrals process using big data.
* Microsemi acquired Vitesse Semiconductor for $389 million.
* Orange bought the shares owned by Thales and the CDC state-backed lender in its cloud computing joint venture, Cloudwatt.
* Panasonic purchased ITC Global, a US-based satellite communications service provider.
* Rakuten, a Japanese online retailer, acquired OverDrive, a US-based e-book company, for $410 million.
* SK Telecom proposed a EUR583 million acquisition of a 49.4% stake in SK Broadband that will give the former 100% ownership.
* Andreessen Horowitz invested in Tachyon, a big data start-up.
* Alfa Telecom proposed a $2.8 billion investment in Turkcell for a 13.76% stake.
* Apple has won its patent case involving five patents owned by Conversant Intellectual Property Management.
* Yahoo has pulled the plug on its China operations.
* Very good quarterly figures from Tencent.
* Good quarterly numbers from Adobe and Jabil Circuit (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Sony.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Transcend.
* Mediocre quarterly results from China Mobile and Tech Data.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Oracle, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end numbers from Telecom Italia, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Quarterly losses from Avid and Zebra Technologies.
* The appointments of Abid Ali Neemuchwala as president and COO of Wipro; John Sarvis as president and CEO of AVX; and Cher Wang as CEO of HTC.
* The retirement of John Gilbertson, CEO of AVX.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from GoDaddy.
* An IPO filling in Australia by MYOB, an Australian financial software firm.

EMEA/Africa:
* The security appliance market in EMEA ended Q4 2014 with a 26.9% share of total worldwide revenue, a decline of 2.3% year-over-year, according to IDC. Unit shipments, however, were up 9.8% year-over-year, driven largely by demand in the emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa.

Yahoo has pulled the plug on its China operations.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are estimated to reach 2.5 billion units in 2015, an increase of 2.8% over 2014, according to Gartner. In spending terms, the global computing devices market (PCs and ultramobiles) is on pace to reach $226 billion, a 7.2% decline in current US dollars.
* The security appliance market revenue and unit shipments continued to grow in Q4 2014, according to IDC. Worldwide vendor revenue grew 8.6% year-over-year to $2.6 billion in Q4, the 21st consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Shipments grew nearly twice as fast as revenue, at 16.7% year-over-year to 635 933 units, making Q4 the fourth consecutive quarter of shipment growth. For the full year 2014, revenue and shipments improved 8.4% and 8.3% respectively to $9.4 billion and 2.1 million units.
* The combined total market of smartphones, tablets, plus 2-in-1s and PCs, is set to grow from 1.8 billion units in 2014 to 2.5 billion units in 2019, according to IDC. During that time, smartphones will grow to represent the overwhelming majority of total smart connected device shipments, dwarfing both tablets and PCs in terms of shipment volumes.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 3.2% (at over 5 000, the highest weekend close for 15 years)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.1%
* S&P 500: Up 2.7%
* FTSE100: Up 4.2% (at over 7 000, the highest ever weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 1.6% (highest weekend close for 15 years)
* Hang Seng: Up 2.3%
* Shanghai: Up 7.2% (highest weekend close for five years)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+25%), Digicore (-6.9%), Ellies (-9.6%), Huge Group (+12.3%), ISA (+17.5%), Pinnacle Holdings (-7.6%), Sekunjalo (+41%) and Telemasters (-42.7%)

International:
* The sell-off by Orange to PCCW of its 49% stake in Dailymotion.
* The buyout of Websense by Raytheon.
* IPOs from cyber security companies such as LogRhythm, Mimecast and Rapid7.

Africa:
* The possible listing in Ghana of MTN Ghana.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the consolidation of the telecommunications sector in SA.

Fast Company's 2015 list of the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies was published recently. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
* 1: Warby Parker, the builder of the first great 'made-on-the-Internet' brand
* 2: Apple (was number one)
* 3: Alibaba
* 4: Google
* 5: Instagram
* 22: Da-Jiang Innovations, creator of the GOPRO of the sky
* 30: Netflix
* 41: Samsung Electronics