No stopping Accenture spree

Another two Accenture acquisitions, the Flipkart investment and the jostling taking place for a potential and substantial stake in Toshiba's chip business were the key events of the international ICT market during the last two weeks.

At home, Naspers' investment in Takealot was one of the few happenings during a fairly quiet period.

* Naspers made an additional R960 million investment in Takealot; it already owns 40% of the online company.
* Huawei unveiled a new OpenLab in Johannesburg focused on developing solutions relevant to the local market.
* The Public Investment Corporation has reduced its shareholding in Altron to only 3.478%, down from its historic double-digit ownership.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Adapt IT and Blue Label Telecoms.
* The death of Mark Perry, a well-known industry personality who died of cancer at the age of 59.

* The World Bank has launched XL Africa, a five-month business acceleration programme designed to support the 20 most promising digital start-ups from sub-Saharan Africa.
* The appointments of Alan Gow as group CEO of Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa; and Jasper Westerink as CEO of Philips Africa.

Naspers made an additional R960 million investment in Takealot.

* Accenture acquired BeesPath's ClosingBridge platform, which facilitates simple, secure communications and file exchange for real estate finance transactions. The company also bought Kunstmann, an independent integrated communications agency in Belgium.
* Airgain purchased Antenna Plus, a company in receivership.
* AMD acquired the IP and employees of Nitero, one of the few companies in the world capable of supplying 60GHz millimetre wave radio technologies for wireless virtual reality products.
* AT&T bought Straight Path Communications, a holder of licences to wireless spectrum, for $1.6 billion.
* Baidu purchased US-based computer vision start-up firm xPerception, in a move to bolster its renewed efforts in artificial intelligence.
* Crown Castle International acquired Wilcon Holdings, a fibre services provider, for $600 million.
* F-Secure bought Little Flocker, an advanced security technology system available for Macs.
* Grupo, a Chilean telecoms operator, purchased fibre-optic network provider Netline Peru.
* Liberty Interactive acquired Alaskan communications services provider General Communication for $1.12 billion.
* Microsoft bought Deis, a company at the centre of the container transformation. It also purchased Intentional Software, a productivity app vendor whose well-known founder is a programming expert and former Microsoft manager.
* Oracle acquired Moat, a digital measurement cloud firm.
* Riverbed Technology bought Xirrus, a wireless specialist.
* ScanSource purchased Kingcom's channel business assets and associated support organisation in order to sell communication solutions via the Verizon Partner Program.
* Unic Capital Management, a subsidiary of Sino IC Capital, acquired US semiconductor testing company Xcerra for $580 million.
* VMware bought Wavefront, the leading metrics monitoring service for cloud and modern application environments.
* WT Microelectronics purchased fellow Taiwan-based IC distributor Maxtek Technology for $625.3 million.
* Windstream acquired Broadview Networks Holdings, a leading provider of cloud-based unified communications solutions to SMEs, in a deal worth $227.5 million.
* Malaysian mobile group Axiata made a $16.8 million investment in Swedish micro-insurance company BIMA, which also has Digicel and Millicom as investors.
* Google made an $880.29 million proposed investment in LG Display, in a move designed to boost output of organic light-emitting diode screens for smartphones.
* Himax Technologies made a 45.1% investment in Emza Visual Sense, with a one-year option to acquire the remaining 54.9% of Emza's equity and all outstanding stock options.
* Malaysian pension fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan made a $100 million investment in Axiata's telecoms infrastructure services subsidiary, edotco.
* Tencent Holdings, Microsoft and eBay made a $1.4 billion investment in India's top e-commerce firm, Flipkart.
* Tencent Holdings made a $142 million (9.9%) investment in Seasun Group, a game developer; and a $200 million investment in Zhuan, a used goods trading platform operated under 58.com, China's largest online marketplace.
* Tech Data and Propel GPS formed a strategic partnership as an expansion of the former's SmartForce Internet of things (IOT) portfolio, offered by its Smart IOT Solutions practice. The latter offers an IOT/cloud-based platform for assets of all types, with vertical market applications in commercial vehicle fleet, transportation, utilities and construction equipment management.
* Less than three months after being sued by Apple for $1 billion, Qualcomm is countersuing the iPhone maker in a dispute over licensing fees for mobile technology.
* BlackBerry has been awarded a preliminary $814.9 million in royalty overpayments made to Qualcomm.
* The US International Trade Commission has launched a patent infringement investigation of television set-top boxes and other components that Arris International supplies to Comcast and DirecTV for their Xfinity and Genie customers.
* Document Security Systems has filed lawsuits against Cree, Seoul Semiconductor, Everlight Electronics and Everlight Americas, regarding alleged infringement of several of DSS's light emitting diode patents.
* Motorola Solutions has filed patent infringement complaints with the regional court of D"usseldorf, in Germany, against Hytera Communications Corporation and Hytera Mobilfunk.
* Symantec has filed a second patent infringement lawsuit against Zscaler.
* Applied Optoelectronics will replace Adeptus Health in the S&P SmallCap 600.
* IT company Ciber and some of its US units have filed for bankruptcy protection under chapter 11.
* EPD (electrophoretic display) e-paper maker E Ink Holdings and Sony Semiconductor Solutions have established a joint venture for combining the former's e-paper R&D and manufacturing capability with the latter's product development and marketing expertise, in order to develop new e-paper products or display systems.
* Chinese electronics company LeEco is no longer buying Vizio, a leading manufacturer of televisions, in what was a $2 billion deal.
* Excellent quarterly results from Lam Research.
* Very good quarterly figures from ASML, Largan Precision and Netflix.
* Good quarterly numbers from Adtran, TSMC, Yahoo (back in the black) and ZTE.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Benchmark Electronics, eBay, Infosys, Maxim Integrated Products, NCR, Omnicom Group, Rogers Communications, Snap-On, Tata Consultancy Services and Yaego.
* Mediocre quarterly results from IBM, Qualcomm, Software AG, Syntel and Verizon Communications.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alliance Data Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Barracuda Networks, with revenue up but profit down; Celestica, with revenue up but profit down; EFI, with revenue down but profit up; Manhattan Associates, with revenue down but profit up; PC Connection, with revenue up but profit down; and Shaw Communications, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from MTS Systems.
* Quarterly losses from Datawatch, Proofpoint, PTC, SeaChange International and Toshiba.
* A full-year loss from Uber.
* The appointment of Charles Layne as CEO of Telesoft.
* The death of Tom Olofson, the ex-chairman and CEO of Epiq Systems.
* A planned IPO on the Bucharest Stock Exchange from DIGI Communications, a provider of telecoms services in Romania and Hungary.
* A planned IPO from Qualtrics, a computer that makes research software that allows companies to track the experiences of both their customers and employees through market research, employee evaluations, Web site feedback and other data collection.
* An IPO filing from Altice USA, the US arm of the French cable/telecoms company.
* An IPO filing from Wrap Technologies, a development stage security technology company focused on delivering innovative solutions to customers, primarily law enforcement and security personnel.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Yext, a knowledge engine. Its platform lets businesses manage their digital knowledge in the cloud and sync it to over 100 services, including Apple Maps, Bing, Cortana, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Instagram, Siri and Yelp.

EMEA/Africa:
* SA is projected to have the highest ICT spend ($10.5 billion) in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa regions, according to Huawei.
* The EMEA traditional PC market (desktops, notebooks and workstations) continued to stabilise in Q117, with the market posting modest growth (1.6%) and totalling 17.4 million units, according to IDC.
* The MEA region has become increasingly important for the majority of global Fortune 500 companies, with Dubai and Johannesburg topping the list of most attractive cities. This is according to Infomineo, a global business research company specialising in Africa and the Middle East, which focuses on multinationals looking at entering, or already present in, the MEA region.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.5 trillion in 2017, a 1.4% increase from 2016, according to Gartner. This growth rate is down from the previous quarter's forecast of 2%, due in part to the rising US dollar.
* Worldwide PC shipments totalled 62.2 million units in Q117, a 2.4% decline from Q116, according to Gartner. The first quarter of 2017 was the first time since 2007 that the PC market experienced shipments below 63 million units in a quarter.
* Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $386 billion in 2017, an increase of 12.3% from 2016, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs (desktop, notebook and workstation) totalled 60.3 million units in Q117, posting year-on-year growth of 0.6%, according to IDC.
* International vendors produced 307.049 million smartphones in total in Q117, shrinking 23.2% on quarter, according to TrendForce.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.2%
* FTSE100: Down 3.2%
* DAX: Down 1.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.5%
* S&P 500: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.6%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.2%
* Hang Seng: Down 0.9%
* Shanghai: Down 3.5%

International:
* The outcome of the battle for MoneyGram International following Ant Financial upping its bid by 36% to outbid Euronet Worldwide's offer.
* Turkish electronics and appliance maker Vestel purchasing the television unit of Toshiba.

South Africa:
* Remgro selling broadband provider Dark Fibre Africa to Internet Solutions (IS); it owns 51.9%.

Fortune magazine recently published its '2017 100 Best Companies to Work For' list. Included, from a technology perspective, are:
* 1: Google
* 7: Ultimate Software
* 8: Salesforce.com
* 13: Intuit
* 15: SAS
* 39: Nvidia
* 40: World Wide Technology
* 42: VMware
* 59: SAP America
* 60: Adobe
* 66: Activision Blizzard
* 67: Cisco
* 71: Autodesk
* 81: Cadence Design Systems
* 88: Accenture
* 93: AT&T