Accenture buys LabAnswer

Another Accenture acquisition, IPO filings and planned IPO filings by several Asia-based tech companies were the highlights of the international ICT market last week.

At home, the Net 1/Cell C news was one of the main local stories.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Reunert, with revenue up 9.9% and profit up 3.5%.
* Good year-end figures from M-FiTec (no meaningful comparisons possible).
* A full-year loss (2016) from TCS, with revenue down 6.4%.
* PIC invested in Datatec; it now owns a 20.008% stake in the company.
* A Naspers-led group made an $80 million investment in Swiggy (India), an online food ordering and delivery start-up. Naspers has already invested around $1.5 billion in India to date, and besides PayU, it owns classified ad business OLX, online travel portal Ibibo, and it holds a 15% stake in online retailer Flipkart.
* Net 1 UEPS Technologies will invest R2 billion for a 15% stake in Cell C, scaling back its commitment in the original deal to take over the company. Net 1 has, however, dropped its plan to take a stake in Blue Label as part of the deal.
* Turkcell's $4.2 billion lawsuit against MTN is set to go to trial in SA in 2018.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Blue Label Telecoms.

Net 1 UEPS Technologies will invest R2 billion for a 15% stake in Cell C.

* Accenture acquired LabAnswer, a leading US-based research and laboratory informatics technology consulting firm.
* AT&T bought the Vyatta network operating system and associated assets of Brocade Communications Systems.
* Descartes Systems Group purchased substantially all of the assets of the business of PCSTrac, including certain related assets of Progressive Computer Services.
* First Data acquired CardConnect, a technology-oriented commerce solutions provider.
* GTCR, a leading private equity firm, bought Sage Payment Solutions, a leading provider of payment processing and merchant acquiring solutions in North America. The deal was worth $260 million.
* Happiest Minds Technologies (India) purchased OSSCube, a US-based digital transformation company.
* IBM acquired TIMETOACT GROUP's digital workplace hub, XCC - Web content and custom apps extension.
* NIIT Technologies, through its arm Incessant Technologies, bought a 55% stake in US-based RuleTek, a BPM architecture services company specialising in providing architectural leadership to Pega Smart BPM projects.
* Omnitracs, a global pioneer of fleet management solutions to transportation and logistics companies, purchased Shaw Communications' assets of Shaw Tracking, the leading fleet management solutions provider in Canada.
* Tyler Technologies acquired Modria, a company specialising in online dispute resolution for government and commercial entities, to complement its courts, justice, appraisal and tax solutions.
* US-based Vemanti Group, a diversified holding company, bought a majority stake in Ho Chi Minh City-based tech firm Two Group JSC, which was founded in 2013 and owns four ventures in e-commerce, location navigation, content streaming and social media verticals.
* Alibaba Group made an 18% investment in state-owned Bailian Group's Lianhua Supermarket chain, a move that will make the Chinese e-commerce giant the second largest shareholder.
* Cevian Capital made a 5%+ investment in Ericsson.
* SoftBank Group made a significant minority stake investment in OSIsoft, a privately held maker of industrial software used to manage plants and factories.
* Private equity firm Warburg Pincus and Tencent Holdings made a $120 million investment in Chinese online tutoring company Yuanfudao.
* Wistron made a $100 million investment in digital signage software company Videri.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Arista Networks has won a ruling in its legal battle with Cisco Systems over networking device technology, thus setting the stage for Arista to undo a US agency's order blocking importation of some of its products.
* The co-founder of the Android operating system, Andy Rubin, has revealed his first new creation since leaving Google in 2014: a $699 Android phone that aims to take on Apple and Samsung for the high end of the mobile market. The phone, created by Rubin's new firm, Essential, comes with the standard top-of-the-line set-up in many areas: a 5.7-inch QHD display, a pair of 13MP rear cameras and an 8MP front-facing one, a 7.8mm thick body and USB-C connector at the base.
* Japan's SoftBank's proposed $14 billion merger between its satellite start-up OneWeb and peer Intelsat SA has fallen through.
* Chang Xiaobing, former chairman of China Unicom and China Telecom, has been sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to corruption.
* Excellent quarterly results from Mobileye.
* Very good quarterly figures from Descartes Systems Group.
* Good quarterly numbers from Broadcom and Ciena.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Daktronics (back in the black), Ixys, Semtech and VMware.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Analog Devices, with revenue up but profit down; and Tech Data, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Box, Guidewire Software, HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Rocket Internet, Uber, Workday and Yext.
* A full-year loss from Reliance Communications.
* The appointments of Arnaud de Puyfontaine as chairman of Telecom Italia; and Giuseppe Recchi as deputy chairman of Telecom Italia (was chairman).
* A proposed IPO for Nasdaq from Vietnamese online gaming and messaging firm VNG, in what could be the first overseas listing by a firm of the Southeast Asian nation.
* A planned IPO in Hong Kong from China Tower, the mobile infrastructure joint venture co-owned by China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, and one that could take place later this year, and raise up to $10 billion.
* An IPO filing in India by Cable TV and broadband services provider GTPL Hathway.
* An IPO filing in Pakistan by Inbox Business Technologies, Pakistan's largest IT company by domestic revenue.

* Worldwide:
* Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to rebound slightly in 2017, with expected growth of 3% over the previous year, according to IDC. In 2016, year-over-year growth was 2.5%, marking the lowest growth the industry has ever experienced. With several major devices entering the market this year, IDC anticipates shipment volumes will grow to 1.52 billion in 2017. It expects this momentum to carry into 2018, when smartphone shipments are forecast to grow 4.5% year over year, fuelled by improved economic conditions in many emerging markets, and a full year of new iPhone shipments from Apple.
* Worldwide shipments of augmented reality and virtual reality headsets continued to soar, with a total of 2.3 million units shipped in Q117, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 2%
* FTSE100: Flat (all-time high reached during the last week)
* DAX: Up 1.8% (all-time high reached during the last week)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.6% (all-time high reached during the last week)
* S&P 500: Up 1% (all-time high reached during the last week)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.5% (all-time high reached during the last week)
* Nikkei225: Up 2.5% (highest weekend close since August 2015)
* Hang Seng: Up 1.1% (highest weekend close since July 2015)
* Shanghai: Down 0.1%

* International:
* America Movil offloading a stake in Telesites, its tower business.

* Africa:
* Pan-African telecoms operator Seacom investing in last-mile fibre assets that access significant populations of end-users.

* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Blue Label and Cell C.

The Forbes Global 2000 ranking is based on a composite score from equally weighted measures of revenue, profit, assets and market value. The 2017 list features public companies from 58 countries that, together, account for $35.3 trillion in revenue, $2.5 trillion in profit, $169.1 trillion in assets, and have a combined market value of $48.8 trillion. All four metrics are up from the 2016 ranking, with market capitalisation up 10% from last year.

Included in the top 100, from a technology perspective, are:
* 9: Apple (was 8)
* 11: AT&T (was 12)
* 15: Samsung Electronics (was 18)
* 18: Verizon Communications (was 15)
* 19: Microsoft (was 23)
* 21: China Mobile (was 18)
* 24: Alphabet (was 27)
* 31: Comcast (was 35)
* 37: NTT (was 44)
* 39: SoftBank (was 69)
* 43: IBM (was 41)
* 54: Intel (was 60)
* 58: Cisco (was 63)
* 70: Oracle (was 82)
* 77: Deutsche Telekom (was 73)
* 83: Amazon (was 237)
* 98: Hon Hai Precision Industry (was 117)

Further analysis will follow next week.