Fujifilm snaps up Xerox

SAP's acquisition and Fujifilm Holdings' acquisition of Xerox were the key happenings in the international ICT market last week.

At home, Reunert's deal was the main local story.

* Good Q3 figures from MiX Telematics, with revenue up 10.1% and profit up 67.5%.
* Positive trading updates from MTN and Vodacom.
* A mixed trading update from Jasco.
* Reunert acquired SkyWire Technologies, a wireless broadband service provider.
* Smollan and Virgin Group invested in wiGroup, a mobile software firm, which follows similar investment from Investec Asset Management in 2015.
* The resignation of Kyle Whitehill, CEO of Liquid Telecom SA.

* Zimbabwe will not go ahead with plans to introduce a fourth player into its mobile telecommunications sector, due to a lack of available spectrum.
* The Namibia Competition Commission has rejected the merger bid between state-owned Namibia Post and Telecom Holdings and the Netherlands' Samba Dutch, which together own the country's largest mobile network operator MTC.
* Telecom Egypt has settled its dispute with Etisalat Misr. The former will pay $48 million to the latter to mitigate the risk of a potential loss of more than $100 million.
* The appointment of Andy MacDonald as Citrix's area VP for emerging markets.

* Amdocs acquired Vubiquity, a leading provider of premium content services and technology solutions.
* Avaya bought Spoken Communications in a move designed to help migrate its call centre technology to the cloud.
* Datawatch purchased Angoss Software, a data science platform leader, for $24.5 million.
* Descartes Systems Group purchased Aljex Software, a cloud-based provider of back-office transportation management solutions for freight brokers and transportation providers.
* Fujifilm Holdings acquired Xerox for $6.1 billion, in a move that will combine the latter into its joint venture Fuji Xerox in an effort to cut costs.
* INAP, a provider of high-performance Internet infrastructure including colocation, managed services and hosting, cloud and high-performance network services, bought SingleHop, a leader in the managed hosting and infrastructure as a service business segment. The deal was worth $132 million.
* Microsoft acquired PlayFab, a cloud gaming start-up.
* Motorola Solutions bought Avigilon, a Canadian security camera maker, for C$1.2 billion.
* Polaris Capital Group purchased a 70% stake in Fujitsu's wholly-owned mobile phone unit.
* Red Hat acquired CoreOS, an innovator and leader in Kubernetes and container-native solutions, for $250 million.
* UK-based Relx bought US-based ThreatMetrix, a digital identity group, for £580 million.
* SAP purchased Callidus, a cloud-based sales management software company, for $2.4 billion.
* Shutterfly acquired the privately held photography company Lifetouch for $825 million.
* Trimble bought e-Builder, a leading SaaS-based construction program management solution for capital program owners and program management firms.
* Viavi Solutions purchased the Test and Measurement business of Cobham for $455 million.
* Zayo paid $31.5 million for most of the assets of Neutral Path Communications and Near North Partners, long haul infrastructure providers.
* Alibaba made a $146 million investment in BigBasket, an Indian online grocer.
* Alibaba and Foxconn Technology Group led a $348 million investment in Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Xiaopeng Motors, marking Alibaba's first big investment in a car maker.
* CK Hutchison led an investment in Matrixx Software, a provider of a next-generation digital commerce platform for telcos and related industries.
* Google invested in Go-Jek, the hail-railing service that rivals Uber and Grab in Indonesia.
* One Equity Partners, a leading middle market private equity firm, invested in a majority stake in Media Solutions, a global provider of media processing, delivery and TV service platforms, from Ericsson, which will continue to own a 49% stake.
* Softbank made a 51% investment in Line's mobile unit.
* Telkom Indonesia, the largest state-owned ICT enterprise and telecommunications network in Indonesia, invested in Europe-based multinational mobile wallet provider Cellum Global.
* Tencent Holdings led a $5.4 billion investment in Dalian Wanda Group's commercial property arm; and a $1.59 billion deal in Chinese menswear group Heilan Home, upping a retail rivalry with fellow internet giant Alibaba Group Holding.
* Excellent quarterly results from ESI (back in the black), Macronix International (back in the black) and Nintendo.

Telecom Egypt has settled its dispute with Etisalat Misr.

* Very good quarterly figures from Alibaba, Amazon, AMD (back in the black), OpenText, PayPal, ServiceNow and Sogou.
* Good quarterly numbers from Apple, Bottomline Technologies (back in the black), Brooks Automation, Changyou.com, Facebook, Kyocera, Roper Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, Teledyne Technologies and Tetra Tech.
* Good year-end numbers from Holtek Semiconductor, Line and PTI.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amdocs, CACI, CDK Global, CGI Group, Charter Communications, Check Point Software Technologies, CGI Group, Chunghwa Telecom, Mobile Mini, Pitney Bowes (back in the black), Sensata Technologies, Shutterfly and Symantec.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Realtek Semiconductor.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Belden and BT Group.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from Coretronic and Kinsus Interconnect Technology.
* Mixed quarterly figures from ADP, Align Technology, Anixter International, ASE, DST Systems, Harris, II-VI and Seagate Technology, with revenue up but net income down; and from AT&T, NetScout Systems and Nokia, with revenue down but net income up.
* Quarterly losses from CA, Cadence Design Systems, Cavium, Citrix Systems, Corning, Cypress Semiconductor, EA, eBay, EFI, Ericsson, GoPro, Integrated Devices Technology, ITG, Juniper Networks, Key Tronic, Kulicke & Soffa, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions, O2Micro International, OSI Systems, Plantronics, Qorvo, Qualcomm, Rambus, Reliance Communications, Rudolph Technologies, Sanmina Silicon Labs, Sohu.com, Sprint, Tableau Software, Viavi, Weatherford International and Xerox
* A full-year loss from Leshi Internet.
* The appointments of Sanjay Brahmawar as CEO of Software AG; John Hennessy as chairman of Alphabet; Kyle Whitehill as CEO of Avanti Communications; and Kenichiro Yoshida as CEO of Sony.
* The retirement of Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG.
* The departures of Kazuo Hirai, CEO of Sony; and Thinh Tran, CEO of Sigma Designs.
* A disappointing IPO on Nasdaq by One Stop Systems, which designs, manufactures and markets high-end systems for high-performance computing.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide server shipments in Q118 are expected to stay flat or drop slightly, but demand from large-size data centre clients will remain strong, according to Digitimes Research. Worldwide server shipments reached 3.66 million in Q417, accounting for over 25% of the annual volumes in 2017.
* Worldwide shipments of devices, ie, PCs, tablets and mobile phones, totalled 2.28 billion units in 2017, according to Gartner. Shipments are on course to reach 2.32 billion units in 2018, an increase of 2.1%.
* Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 403.5 million units during 4Q17, resulting in a 6.3% decline when compared to the 430.7 million units shipped in the final quarter of 2016, according to IDC. For the full year, the worldwide smartphone market saw a total of 1.472 billion units shipped, declining less than 1% from the 1.473 billion units shipped in 2016.
* Worldwide spending on ICT will be nearly $4 trillion in 2018, according to IDC. The consumer market will account for more than $1 trillion in ICT spending in 2018, and will deliver more than one-third of all worldwide spending throughout the forecast. Consumer spending will also experience the slowest growth over the forecast period, with a CAGR of 1.2%. Roughly 80% of consumer spending will go to devices and mobile telecoms services.

* JSE All share index: Down 4.8%
* FTSE100: Down 2.9%
* DAX: Down 4.2%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 4.1%
* S&P 500: Down 3.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 3.5%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.5%
* Hang Seng: Down 1.7%
* Shanghai: Down 2.7%

International:
* Vodafone buying some of the cable networks of Liberty Global.
* The possible acquisition of Maxim Integrated Products by Japan-based Renesas.

South Africa:
* A new CEO for Liquid Telecom SA.

Fortune magazine has published its 2018 'world's most admired companies' listing. In the top 50 are:
* 1: Apple (was number 1)
* 2: Amazon (was 2)
* 3: Alphabet (was 6)
* 7: Microsoft (was 9)
* 11: Netflix (was 14)
* 12 Facebook (was 9)
* 15 Salesforce (was 20)
* 35: IBM (was 24)
* 40: Accenture (was 41)
* 45: Intel (was 46)
* 49: AT&T (was 37)