HP cuts its losses

Altice's $17 billion+ acquisition of US cable TV operator Cablevision Systems, and the job cuts at HP, dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, EOH's very good full-year performance stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* Very good year-end figures from EOH, with revenue up 34.8% and profit up 40.6%.
* A full-year loss from Jasco, although revenue up 7.7%.
* A positive trading update from Alaris Holdings.
* UK-based Redstor acquired Attix5, the SA-based cloud backup and disaster recovery software developer.

* Marc Godin was appointed VP and GM MEA for Lenovo. Godin succeeds Oliver Ebel, who has moved to head up Lenovo's smartphone business across EMEA, including both Motorola and Lenovo smartphones and wearable technology.
* The appointments of Nidal Abou-Ltaif as president for EMEA and Asia-Pacific for Avaya; and Gary de Menezes as head of NetApp's team in SA and the SADC region.

Power shortages, a weakening rand, bureaucracy and labour disputes are holding back SA's IT market.

* Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas, a cloud computing consulting company that has provided services to companies such as Google and Salesforce.com.
* Alcatel-Lucent bought US-based device management specialist Mformation in order to benefit from its cloud-enabled Internet of things platform.
* Altice purchased US cable TV operator Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion. Altice is owned by French telecoms tycoon Patrick Drahi.
* Apple acquired Mapsense, a start-up that builds tools for analysing and visualising location data.
* Comcast bought Contingent Network Services, a company that specialises in managed secure area networks, integration, logistics and maintenance for large companies.
* Business consulting services provider Huron Consulting Group purchased cloud-based services firm Cloud62.
* Mentor Graphics acquired its majority-owned subsidiary Calypto Design Systems.
* Qualcomm's subsidiary, Qualcomm Life, bought Capsule Technologie, a global provider of medical device integration and clinical data management solutions, with more than 1 930 hospital clients in 38 countries. Capsule will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Life.
* Tele Columbus, Germany's third largest cable company, bought Pepcom, Germany's fourth largest cable company (owned by Star Capital), for EUR608 million.
* Vista Equity Partners purchased Solera Holdings, a company that provides technology services to insurance companies, in a deal worth $3.74 billion.
* A federal appeals court gave Apple new legal leverage over Samsung Electronics in the smartphone wars, ruling the iPhone maker was entitled to an injunction barring Samsung from using certain phone features that violated Apple's patents.
* HP announced about 30 000 job cuts, as it seeks to put the ill-fated EDS acquisition behind it.
* Russia's anti-monopoly agency said Google is abusing its market position in the country and will face penalties, in a case launched by local competitor Yandex.
* TeliaSonera and Telenor have cancelled the merger of their business units in Denmark.
* Very good half-year figures from Esker.
* Good quarterly numbers from Adobe and Zayo Group (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Oracle.
* A full-year loss from Toshiba.
* The appointments of Tatsumi Kimishima as president of Nintendo; and Brad Smith as president of Microsoft.
* A planned IPO on the FTSE next month by British payments processing firm Worldpay Group, having decided to list its shares rather than being taken over by French rival Ingenico.

South Africa:
* Power shortages, a weakening rand, bureaucracy and labour disputes are holding back SA's IT market, according to Gartner. It says overall spending on IT in SA has decreased 4.3% from 2014 to $25.3 billion in 2015. Analysts say the country's struggling economy introduces constraints on IT market growth.

EMEA/Africa:
* The EMEA tablet market (which includes two-in-one devices) posted flat growth of 0.3% year on year in Q2 2015, according to IDC. A total of 4.05 million units were shipped in Q2 2015, with tablets growing 0.1% year on year to total four million units. The two-in-one market grew 17.6% over the same period to make up the remaining 50 000 units. For the first half of the year, the overall market shrunk 3.2% year on year, which compares unfavourably to the 59.6% year-on-year growth recorded in the corresponding period of 2014.
* The African PC market sank to new lows in Q215, amid a slowdown in GDP growth, increasing unemployment, and the strengthening of the dollar against many of the continent's currencies, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* A growing list of vendors, a proliferation of devices, experiences, and price points, and steady consumer adoption will fuel growth in the worldwide market for wearable devices, according to IDC. Wearable device shipments are expected to reach 76.1 million units in 2015, up 163.6% from the 28.9 million units shipped in 2014. By 2019, worldwide shipments will reach 173.4 million units, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate of 22.9%. Total shipments include both basic and smart wearables, which are two very different product categories in many aspects.
* Both factory revenue and unit shipments continued to grow in the first half of 2015, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker. Worldwide vendor revenue increased 9.6% year over year to $4.9 billion, and volume shipments expanded to 1.1 million and grew 8.8% year over year. For 2Q15, worldwide vendor revenue increased 12.2% year over year to $2.6 billion, marking the 23rd consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Shipments grew 10.6% year over year for the seventh consecutive quarter of volume growth, ending 2Q15 at 567 388 units shipped.

* JSE All share index: Up 4.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.3%
* S&P 500: Down 0.2%
* FTSE100: Down 0.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.1%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.9%
* Shanghai: Down 3.2%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (+7.6%), Altron (-7%), Altron-N (-11.5%), ISA (+8.1%) and Stella Capital Partners (+7.7%)

International:
* Further news regarding the proposed Symantec split.
* Tencent Holdings investing in a games-focused Chinese video service.
* The withdrawal by TeliaSonera from its Eurasia activities.

South Africa:
* Further local telecommunications developments.

IT spending in SA is forecast to reach $26.6 billion in 2016, an increase of 5.1% from 2015, according to Gartner. While the IT market is on pace to pick up in 2016, 2015 is proving to be a difficult year for many market segments in SA, the IT research and advisory firm said.