Facebook under scrutiny

Paul Booth.

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Facebook's data privacy fiasco and Spotify's IPO dominated the international ICT market during the last two weeks.

At home, Huge's secondary listing on A2X and Sagarmatha's proposed listing were the highlights of the local scene.

* An interim loss from Stella Capital Partners.
* Mixed interim numbers from EOH, with revenue up 18.9% but profit down 88.1%; and Telemasters, with revenue down 0.4% but profit up 84.2%.
* 4Sight Holdings acquired Simulation Engineering Technologies for R53.5 million (70%).
* Hewlett Packard Enterprise bought privately held Cape Networks, a Cape Town-based AI start-up.
* Sagarmatha Technologies, a South African company that owns newspapers, online shopping and classified platforms, is targeting a valuation of more than $4 billion in Johannesburg's first initial public offering of an e-commerce company.
* South African innovator in Internet of things (IOT) technology, IoT.nxt, and Dell have announced a strategic partnership, which will allow companies to rapidly digitise their business operations and make IOT solutions a reality.
* Huge is to be traded on A2X with effect from 10 April.
* SA's anti-corruption agency is investigating a R671 million government contract with SAP, which has admitted misconduct in separate deals involving friends of ousted president Jacob Zuma.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Huge Group.
* The appointments of Brett Dawson as chairman of Gather Online; and Minanto Johnson as Newland ID country channel manager.

* Information security company SearchInform has partnered with Condyn, an SA-based IT security specialist, to bring SearchInform's next-generation data leak prevention technology to the South African and African market.
* Senegal's telecom regulator ARTP announced the official launch of commercial activities for Africa Access, Arc Informatique and Waw. The three companies secured 10-year broadband licences at the end of 2016, and were each granted LTE spectrum to deploy their own network in selected areas of the country.
* The appointments of Chris Bowen as Digi International's VP of sales for the EMEA region; Yuichi Ishizuka as Canon's president and CEO for the EMEA region; and Takuya Marubayashi as Kyocera Document Solutions' president for the EMEA region.
* The retirement of Rokus van Iperen, president and CEO of Canon's EMEA region.

* Accenture acquired Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, a content-focused leader in integrated marketing, cross-channel strategy development and creative execution.
* Advanced Semiconductor Engineering bought NXP's 40% share of Suzhou ASEN Semiconductors for $127 million.
* Alibaba purchased Ele.me, a major platform in China's food delivery market, for $5.4 billion (57%).
* Alphabet's Google acquired GIF platform Tenor, in a move designed to help enhance search and sharing of animated images.
* AVX bought KUMATEC Sondermaschinenbau & Kunststoffverarbeitung that develops, constructs and manufactures automation equipment and processes plastic components.
* FIT Hon Teng, part of the Foxconn Technology Group, purchased Belkin, a maker of WiFi routers, mobile device chargers and keyboards, for $866 million.
* Fujifilm acquired two biotechnology units of Japan's JXTG Holdings for $800 million, as it looks to boost its healthcare business. Fujifilm is seeking growth through buying businesses involved in regenerative medicine and pharmaceuticals, while it plans to gain scale in the existing photocopier business through its planned $6.1 billion acquisition of Xerox.
* Fullscreen Media, a digital media company and a joint venture subsidiary of AT&T, bought start-up firm Reelio, an influencer marketing platform.
* HCL Technologies purchased C3i Solutions, a multi-channel customer engagement service for the life sciences and consumer packaged goods industries.
* Himax Technologies acquired (54.9%) Emza Visual Sense, an Israeli company dedicated to the development of efficient visual sensors. These include proprietary machine-vision algorithms and specific architectures to enable always-on visual sensing capabilities, achieving orders of magnitude improvement in power consumption, price and form factor. Himax now owns 100% of the latter.
* Johnson Controls bought Smartvue, a leading IOT and video provider that empowers cloud video surveillance and IOT video services.
* Meituan Dianping, China's largest provider of on-demand online services, purchased bike-sharing firm Mobike for more than $2.7 billion.
* Plantronics acquired video conferencing equipment maker Polycom for $2 billion.
* TPG, a global alternative asset firm, bought Wind River Systems, which was acquired by Intel in 2009 for $884 million. The company provides computing systems for infrastructure technology, including medical devices, aircraft, railways, communications networks and automobiles.
* Windstream Holdings purchased MASS Communications, a privately held telecommunications network management company, for $37.5 million.

IoT.nxt and Dell have announced a strategic partnership.

* SoftBank made a $400 million investment in India's Paytm E-Commerce. Online retailer Alibaba, an existing investor in Paytm E-Commerce, is investing $45 million in the round.
* A US appeals court has resurrected a multibillion-dollar copyright case brought by Oracle against Alphabet's Google regarding the latter's use of Oracle's Java development platform to create the Android operating system, reversing a 2016 jury verdict.
* Kyocera has filed a complaint in the Regional Court of Dusseldorf, Germany, against Preh, a German-based automotive supplier. Kyocera is of the opinion that Preh infringes a Kyocera patent relating to its haptic feedback technology.
* CACI has withdrawn its offer for CSRA.
* Singapore's ride-hailing company Grab has acquired Uber's Southeast Asia operations, including its ride-sharing and food delivery businesses in the region. As a result, Uber will acquire a 27.5% stake in Grab.
* Cogint announced the spin-off of Red Violet, its risk management business. Following this transaction, Fluent, a Cogint subsidiary and an industry leader in data-driven digital marketing services, will be its sole operating business.
* Facebook believes as many as 87 million users have been affected by Cambridge Analytica's collection and sharing of personal information. The social media giant has also admitted to scanning users' chats and images on Messenger, ostensibly to ensure they abide by rules.
* Microsoft is creating two new engineering teams, with one focusing on how consumers use technology and the other on how businesses use cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Terry Myerson, executive VP of its Windows and devices business, will leave the company following this reorganisation.
* Stratasys has launched a spin-off designed to advance innovation of Powder-Bed Fusion additive manufacturing, called Vulcan Labs. Its solutions are engineered to meet the complex demands of end-use production applications, aimed at significantly overcoming typical deficiencies of productivity, quality and certification.
* The US Federal Trade Commission has taken the unusual step of announcing it has opened an investigation into Facebook.
* Excellent quarterly results from Aehr Test Systems (back in the black).
* Very good year-end figures from Adata Technology and BizLink.
* Good quarterly numbers from FactSet Research Systems, IHS Markit and SAIC.
* Good year-end numbers from Huawei Technologies.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Foxconn, Paychex, Progress Software, SecureWorks (back in the black) and Verint Systems.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from AOET, Clevo, CSI, Esker, Opto Tech and PCL Technologies.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Cellcom Israel.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from Apogee Optocom.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Synnex, with revenue up but net income down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Getac, Quanta Computer and SMIC, with revenue up but net income down.
* Quarterly losses from BlackBerry, Boxlight, Cloudera, CPT, eMagin, HTC, iClick Interactive Asia Group, Partner Communications, Red Hat, Switch and voxceljet.
* A full-year loss from Ali and Unity Opto Technology.
* The appointments of Mark Begor as CEO of Equifax; Frederic Salerno as chairman of Akamai; and Ryan Schulke as CEO of Fluent.
* The retirement of George Conrades, chairman of Akamai.
* The death of Jonathan Flaxman, COO of HP.
* A planned IPO from IBS IT Services on the Moscow Exchange.
* An IPO filing for Nasdaq from DocuSign, an electronic signature technology company.
* An IPO filing for Nasdaq from CLPS, a China-based global IT, consulting and solutions service provider focused on delivering services to global institutions in banking, insurance and financial sectors.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Smartsheet, a company that enables teams to get work done fast and efficiently via a leading cloud-based platform for work execution.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Ceridian HCM Holding, a global HCM software company.
* A disappointing IPO on Nasdaq by Chinese streaming platform iQiyi.
* A disappointing IPO on the NYSE by BiliBili, a Chinese app maker.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Spotify Technology, a music streaming company.

EMEA/Africa:
* Spending on the technologies that enable smart city initiatives is forecast to reach $1.26 billion for the MEA region in 2018, according to IDC. As these initiatives gain traction, IDC expects spending in MEA to accelerate over the 2016-2021 forecast period, reaching $2.3 billion in 2021.
* The large format printer market in CEMA grew 8.1% year-on-year in 2017, with shipments reaching 40 705 units, according to IDC. Shipment value in the same period contracted by 0.4% to $305 million. Stable year-on-year growth was reported in Africa both in unit (5.7%) and value terms (6.2).

Worldwide:
* Security as a service registered strong growth in 2017 at 21% to $4 billion, following the rise in adoption of cloud solutions for enterprises, according to Canalys. This growth was double the pace compared to the rest of the security market, with software and hardware growing respectively 5% and 10% year-on-year to reach $27 billion combined. The total security market was $31 billion in 2017, up 10% overall.
* Capital expenditure in the global telecoms sector is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 1% per year between 2017 and 2020, according to Delloro.
* After a decline of 3% in 2017, worldwide shipments of devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) are forecast to return to growth (+1.3%) in 2018 and will total 2.3 billion units, according to Gartner. While the performance of shipments of devices fluctuate year-over-year, end-user device spending continues to rise and is forecast to increase 7% in 2018.
* Worldwide integrated systems revenue is forecast to total $12.3 billion in 2018, an increase of 18.4% from $10.2 billion in 2017, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software and services is forecast to reach $91.4 billion in 2018, an increase of 10.2% over the amount spent in 2017, according to IDC. Worldwide spending on security solutions will achieve a CAGR of 10% over the 2016-2021 forecast period and total $120.7 billion in 2021.
* Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 27.3% year-over-year in 4Q17, reaching $12.8 billion, according to IDC. For the full year 2017, the combined public and private cloud deployments continued the double-digit annual growth trend from past years, with revenue reaching $43.4 billion with 21.7% year-over-year growth.
* The worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.1% year-over-year to $3.6 billion during 4Q17, according to IDC. Full-year sales surpassed $12.5 billion, representing a 9.4% increase over the previous year and the first time the market surpassed $12 billion.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.9%
* FTSE100: Up 3.8%
* DAX: Up 3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.7%
* S&P 500: Up 0.6%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.1%
* Nikkei225: Up 4.6%
* Hang Seng: Down 1.5%
* Shanghai: Down 0.7%

International:
* The winner in the battle for Fidessa, a UK-based software firm, with the contenders being Ion Investments, SS&C Technologies and Temenos.

South Africa:
* The listing of the shares of Sagarmatha Technologies on Friday, 13 April.

Network World recently published its 'Most powerful Internet of things companies' list. It included, in alphabetical order:
* Amazon Web Services;
* ARM Holdings, which is launching a new series of chips, called Project Trillium, designed to offer machine learning capabilities for IOT deployments;
* AT&T;
* Ayla Networks. The start-up's product is an 'agile' IOT platform, a software framework designed to integrate collection, ingestion and analysis of IOT data in a way that's easy for businesses to apply to their existing processes;
* Bosch, which was in on the ground floor of the current wave of IOT and was ahead of the curve regarding home automation and home devices. Its IOT suite is a robust platform for IOT development;
* Cisco;
* Dell;
* Fujitsu;
* GE, which was in on the ground floor regarding industrial IOT/industry movement that focuses on next-generation instrumentation of industrial processes. Its Predix product is a purpose-built IOT platform that can be used as a framework for a huge range of different projects. It's designed to be a bolt-on solution to automating industrial processes, from manufacturing to preventive maintenance and beyond;
* Google;
* Hitachi;
* Huawei;
* IBM;
* Intel;
* Microsoft;
* Particle, a start-up that has a top-to-bottom platform that covers everything from microcontrollers to the cloud;
* Qualcomm;
* Samsung;
* SAP; and
* Siemens, which has moved into industrial IOT in a big way, like GE. Its MindSphere product competes with GE's Predix, PTC's ThingsWorx and others in the industrial platform space for users trying to deliver tech-like predictive analytics to industrial workplaces.