Google gets pixelated

The acquisitions by a Bain Capital-led consortium and Google dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, it has been a quiet week.

* Good full-year figures from EOH, with revenue up 21.4% and profit up 26.1%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue up 7.7% and profit up 29.7%.
* A positive trading update from Huge Group.
* An acquiring consortium bought Prescient Capital from the PBT Group for R42.9 million.
* Amanda Dambuza, founder and CEO of Uyandiswa, bought back 49% of the company from Adapt IT. The 49% was originally acquired by Adapt IT as part of its enterprise development programme that has helped build Uyandiswa into an 80-person-strong firm with a turnover nearing R100 million.
* Ansys announced the acquisition process of Profitek Industrial Communications has been discontinued by mutual consent.
* SAP has undertaken to publish the outcome of an external probe into alleged wrongdoing at its South African unit, during the last week of October.
* UK-based legal technology firm Epoq Legal plans to enter the South African legal profession market in the first quarter of 2018.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by PBT Group.

* Botswana Power Corporation and Liquid Telecom are reportedly taking the Botswana Telecommunications Regulatory Authority to court this week.
* Interswitch, a Nigeria-based payments processing company, expects to complete its delayed dual listing in London and Lagos before the end of 2019.
* Oracle has opened a new office in Mauritius.
* The Zambian government has given the go-ahead for a fourth mobile operator to be selected to compete with Airtel, MTN and Zamtel.
* The appointment of Pieter Bensch as Sage's executive VP for Africa and the Middle East.

SAP has undertaken to publish the outcome of an external probe into alleged wrongdoing at its South African unit.

* A Bain Capital-led consortium, which includes Apple and Dell Technology, acquired Toshiba's chip unit for $18 billion. Western Digital has since stated it will seek an injunction to block the sale.
* Callidus Software bought OrientDB, a provider of multi-model database technologies.
* Canyon Bridge (China) has proposed a £550 million acquisition of UK-based Imagination Technologies Group, subject to Imagination divesting US chip designer MIPS, which Imagination had bought in 2013. Imagination said it had agreed to sell MIPS for $65 million to Tallwood Venture Capital.
* Ebix purchased the Money Transfer Service Scheme Business of Paul Merchants for $40.7 million.
* ePlus acquired the operating assets of Integrated Data Storage, an advanced data centre solutions provider focused on cloud enablement and managed services.
* Google bought HTC's Pixel division for $1.1 billion.
* Itron purchased Silver Spring, a provider of Important Things connectivity platforms and solutions to utilities and cities. The deal was worth $830 million.
* Nokia will start to book additional revenue from the current quarter, after a ruling by an arbitration court on payments from LG Electronics for using its smartphone patents.
* US electronic chipmaker GlobalFoundries has asked the European anti-trust regulators to investigate market leader TSMC, accusing the Taiwanese firm of unfair competition.
* Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius confirmed the completed construction of a 6 600km-long subsea cable from Virginia Beach to Bilbao, Spain. The cable, named Marea, which means "tide" in Spanish, is the highest capacity cable to cross the Atlantic, offering up to 160Tbps. It is expected to be operational by early 2018.
* Telia will pay a fine of almost $1 billion as a penalty for paying bribes of $330 million to a relative of the then president of Uzbekistan a decade ago.
* Zenefits, the software start-up that has faced a number of regulatory penalties, is changing its business to provide software to insurance brokers.
* Very good quarterly figures from Adobe.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Esker.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Presidio, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Quarterly losses from Analogic.
* The appointment of Chuck Robbins as chairman of Cisco.
* The departure of John Chambers, executive chairman of Cisco.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Southeast Asian e-commerce start-up Sea.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Best, a Chinese logistics firm and the largest Chinese IPO in the US this year.

EMEA/Africa:
* Unit shipments of printer hardware to the EMEA region continued to improve in Q217 and registered an increase of 4% year-on-year compared to a decline of 3% in Q216, according to Context.
* The total EMEA external storage systems value fell by 2.9% in dollars in the second quarter of 2017, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* The total security appliance market saw positive growth in both vendor revenue and unit shipments for 2Q17, according to IDC. Worldwide vendor revenue increased 9.2% year on year to $3 billion and shipments grew 7% to 706 186 units.
* Worldwide PC monitor shipments totalled 28.5 million units in 2Q17, a decline of 6.4% over the prior year, according to IDC.
* The worldwide Ethernet switch market (layer 2/3) recorded $6.43 billion in revenue in 2Q17, an increase of 7.8% year-on-year, according to IDC. Meanwhile, the worldwide total enterprise and service provider router market recorded $3.92 billion in revenue in 2Q17, increasing 6.7% on a year-on-year basis.
* Worldwide purpose-built backup appliance company revenue was down 16.2% year on year, totalling $728.5 million in Q217, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.3%
* FTSE100: Up 1.3%
* DAX: Up 0.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.4%
* S&P 500: Up 0.1%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.3%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.9%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.3%
* Shanghai: Down 0.1%

International:
* AT&T selling its Latin American pay-TV offering, in an attempt to lower its debts before the completion of its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner.
* A possible merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.

South Africa:
* PIC buying a further stake in Telkom SA from the South African government.

Fortune magazine has published its 2017 list of 'The 100 fastest growing companies'. Included in the top 50 are:
* 2: Paycom (new entrant)
* 6: Facebook (number 3 last year)
* 7: Netease (27 last year)
* 9: Amazon (new entrant)
* 10: Arista Networks (new entrant)
* 12: Silicon Motion Technology (new entrant)
* 18: Veeva Systems (new entrant)
* 32: Nexstar Media Group (new entrant)
* 36: Nvidia (new entrant)
* 38: Cirrus Logic (new entrant)
* 43: Micro Semiconductor (new entrant)
* 47: Skyworks Solutions (15 last year)