Panama ex-president in bribery scandal

Welcome to my first column of 2016. As seems to be the norm over the year-end holiday season, the international ICT market was dominated by numerous acquisitions and investments.

At home, Blue Label's investment in Cell C and Vodacom's revised offer for Neotel dominated the local ICT news.

* An interim loss from Labat Africa.
* Excellent year-end figures from Silvertree Internet Holdings, a consumer-focused Internet platform.
* Mixed Q1 numbers from Telemasters, with revenue up 8.4% but profit down 44.7%.
* Positive trading updates from Blue Label Telecoms, Ellies, Jasco and Labat Africa.
* Altron (Altech NuPay) acquired Delter IT Services, a microfinance software development company providing consumer management systems to credit providers.
* Pinnacle Holdings made a 51% acquisition of Solareff, a fast-growing solar photovoltaic specialist.
* Blue Label Telecoms made a R4 billion (35%) investment in Cell C.
* CloudSmiths and Ideas Incorporated, two of SA's independent Salesforce.com partners, merged.
* Negotiations between Powertech and Capitalworks have been terminated.
* Netflix has gone live in SA.
* Cell C announced a major restructuring of the group, which will see its shareholding as follows (assuming the conclusion of the Blue Label transaction): Blue Label - 35%; management and staff - 30%; and 3C Telecommunications - 35%.
* The Huge Group has called off a plan to acquire ICT specialist Centracom.
* MTN and Spain's Telef'onica Group have signed a strategic partnership agreement that enables the two telecoms operators to work together to benefit from their joint scale, combined expertise and market access.
* Pinnacle Holdings is now the majority shareholder in Datacentrix.
* The Vodacom Group announced the amended terms of a proposed R7 billion purchase of Neotel. The modified proposal includes the acquisition of the majority of Neotel's assets related to its fixed-line business as a going concern. However, the acquisition would exclude Neotel's licences relating to spectrum, ECN and ECNS.
* New JSE cautionaries by Blue Label Telecoms and Labat Africa.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Altron, the Huge Group, MTN and TCS.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Labat Africa.
* The appointments of Nomvuyiso Batyi as chairman of ICASA; and Pfungwa Serima as CEO of Metrofile Holdings.
* The resignations of Sunil Joshi, CEO of Neotel; and Lindikhaya Sipoyo, CEO of TCS.

* EOH acquired 50% or more of the following businesses:
* Acron in Iran and Turkey;
* BC Skills in Morocco;
* Consol Systems in Morocco;
* Cozumevi in Turkey; and
* EBS in Mozambique.

* iSON Technologies bought Global Technology Services (GTS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Emirates National Oil Company. iSON Technologies is a pan-African systems integrator, managed service provider and strategic outsourcing player providing end-to-end IT services and solutions across the continent. It has an on-the-ground presence in 23 African countries.
* MTN purchased Nigerian network operator, Visafone Communications.
* Orange acquired Cellcom Liberia and Bharti Airtel's operations in Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.
* MTN will go to court over its Nigerian fine.
* MTN has also been awarded a 4G licence in Ghana.
* Lawmakers in Nigeria will investigate the sale of the country's former national carrier NITEL and its mobile subsidiary MTEL, based on accusations that the companies were undervalued and the winner of the bid, NATCOM Consortium, may only be interested in the assets of the companies and not in resurrecting them.
* Six Telecoms, a provider of voice and data access services in Tanzania, has partnered with NewTelco South Africa, a joint venture between the Jasco Group and NewTelco, to deliver an international point of presence through NewTelco's co-location hub in London.
* The MainOne high capacity Nigerian-Cameroun Submarine Cable System connecting Lagos, Nigeria and Kribi, Cameroun, has been completed and went live last month.
* The appointments of Juliet Anammah as CEO of Jumia Nigeria; Stephen Ball as Aspect Software's senior VP for Europe and Africa; and Jeremy Doutte and Nicolas Martin as co-CEOs of Jumia Global.

Orange has been slapped with a EUR350 million anti-trust fine for abusing its dominant position in France.

* Accenture acquired Beacon Consulting Group, a trusted advisor and management consultant to the North American asset management community; Cimation, an affiliate of Audubon Companies and an industrial Internet of things consulting company known for its work in process automation, IT and industrial control system cyber security; and CRMWaypoint, a supplier of cloud advisory and technology services in the Netherlands.
* ALPS, a subsidiary of DST Systems, bought Kaufman Rossin Fund Services, an independent, full-service provider of specialised administration services to the global financial community.
* Apple purchased Emotient, an artificial intelligence start-up that reads people's emotions by analysing facial expressions.
* A consortium, led by the CEO and chairman of Qihoo 360 Technology, acquired the company for $9.3 billion in a move that will see it privatised.
* Google bought Bebop Technologies, a corporate software start-up that will help lure larger customers to its cloud computing business. The deal was worth $380 million.
* Global Payments purchased Heartland Payment Systems for $3.8 billion.
* IBM acquired Clearleap, a provider of cloud-based video services, in a move designed to boost its cloud computing initiatives. The move aims to empower users to access video from any device at any time and use it as a strategic source of data.
* IBM also bought Iris Analytics, in a move aimed at strengthening its fraud detection analytics.
* Intel purchased German drone maker Ascending Technologies.
* Kunlun Tech, a Chinese games developer, acquired Grindr, a US-based social networking app, for $93 million (60%).
* Microsoft bought Metanautix, an analytics start-up; and Talko, the mobile messaging application company headed by Ray Ozzie, an ex-executive of Microsoft.
* NetApp purchased storage start-up SolidFire for $870 million, in a move that will enable it to boost its presence in the area of solid-state drive-based equipment.
* Oracle acquired StackEngine, a start-up providing software that gives software developers flexibility, by letting them run several copies of an operating system on a single computer.
* Salesforce bought MinHash, a company that specialises in marketing intelligence; and SteelBrick, a start-up that builds quoting and billing functions for SMEs on the Salesforce cloud platform.
* Sophos purchased SurfRight, an innovator in signature-less next-generation endpoint threat detection and response and advanced threat prevention.
* Wipro acquired Viteos Group, a BPaaS provider for the alternative investment management industry. The deal was worth $130 million.
* Nvidia lost its claims against Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm after a US trade agency said there was no violation of Nvidia's patent rights related to graphics processing chips.
* A US appeals court said Cisco did not infringe a patent held by Commil USA regarding its WiFi technology, reversing a near $64 million judgment against the networking equipment maker in a long-running patent dispute.
* Orange has been slapped with a EUR350 million anti-trust fine for abusing its dominant position in France.
* Qualcomm and Japan's TDK have formed a $3 billion joint venture to supply key components and modules used to communicate wirelessly with devices like smartphones, drones, robots and Internet of things products.
* The European Commission has launched two anti-trust cases against Qualcomm, charging the US technology company with distorting competition in the critical market for the chips used in smartphones and other mobile devices.
* Yahoo will not sell off its Alibaba stake.
* Ricardo Martinelli, the ex-president of Panama, has been identified as one of several alleged co-conspirators in a bribery scheme that helped SAP to sell millions of dollars in software to Panama.
* In the annual re-ranking of the Nasdaq-100 Index, comprising the 100 largest non-financial stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock market, Expedia, Maxim Integrated Products and T-Mobile US joined the index, and Garmin and VimpelCom left the index.
* Excellent full-year numbers from Ayden.
* Good quarterly numbers from Adobe and Jabil Circuit.
* Good year-end figures from Phison Electronics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Finisar, Infosys and VeriFone Systems.
* Satisfactory half-year figures from Dixons Carphone.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Comtech Telecommunications, CSI, Dell, Largan Precision, Micron Technology, Oracle and TSMC.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Accenture, with revenue up but profit down; CalAmp, with revenue up but profit down; Intel, with revenue up but profit down; Red Hat, with revenue up but profit down; Synnex, with revenue down but profit up; and WNS, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Barracuda Networks, BlackBerry, Marvell Technology Group, ModusLink, Progress Software, Rocket Internet, Volt Information Sciences and Xtera Communications.
* A half-year loss from Imagination Technologies.
* The appointments of Anil Chakravarthy as CEO of Informatica (was 'acting'); Michel Combes as interim CE of Numericable SFR; Jeff Glueck as CEO of Foursquare; Kati Levoranta as CEO of Rovi; Zander Lurie as CEO of SurveyMonkey; John McAdam as CEO of F5 Networks (was chairman); Abidali Neemuchwala as CEO of Wipro; Clive Selley as CEO of Openreach; and Jeff Williams as COO of Apple.
* The resignations of Mark Adams, president of Micron Technology; Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare; Michael McAndrew, president and CEO of Black Box; Pekka Rantala, CEO of Rovi; Manuel Rivelo, CEO of F5 Networks; and Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE (following the BT takeover of EE).
* A planned IPO in Hong Kong by Biel Crystal Manufactory, which supplies the cover glass for Apple, Samsung Electronics and other mobile phone makers, in a deal worth about $2 billion.
* A planned Hong Kong IPO in Q2 2016 from Hon Hai Precision Industry, when it plans to spin off its Foxconn Interconnect Technology unit in a deal worth at least $1.5 billion.
* IPO filings for Nasdaq from Nutanix, a storage start-up; and Dell's cyber security unit, SecureWorks.
* An IPO filing by Twilio, a company whose software is used by developers to add communications services such as text, voice and video to apps and other services.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Atlassian, the Australian software company that was founded in 2002 and owns products such as JIRA, Confluence, HipChat, Bitbucket and JIRA Service Desk, and is meant to organise and assist communication between software and non-software teams.

South Africa:
* IT spending in SA will top $26.6 billion in 2016, according to IDC.
* The number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in SA was 0.9 million in Q415, according to Berg Insight.

EMEA/Africa:
* The public cloud services market in the MENA region is projected to grow to 19.3% in 2016 to total $880 million, according to Gartner.
* IT spending in Nigeria will top $5.3 billion in 2016, according to IDC.
* The value of the total EMEA external storage systems market fell 9.8% year over year to $1.57 billion in 3Q15, according to IDC.
* EMEA purpose-built backup appliance vendor revenue decreased 4% year-over-year to reach $217.5 million in Q315, according to IDC.
* Tanzania's telecoms market was forecast to reach $1.3 billion in revenue in 2015, according to Pyramid Research.

Worldwide:
* There were 331.9 million smartphones shipped globally in Q315, an increase of 10.5% on quarter and 7.7% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
* According to Gartner, 1.6 billion connected things will be used by smart cities in 2016, an increase of 39% from 2015.
* Worldwide PC shipments totalled 75.7 million units in Q415, an 8.3% decline from Q414, according to Gartner. For the year 2015, PC shipments totalled 288.7 million units, an 8% decline from 2014.
* The total security appliance market showed positive growth in both vendor revenue and unit shipments for 3Q15, according to IDC.
* The worldwide wearable device market will reach a total of 111.1 million units shipped in 2016, up a strong 44.4% from the 80 million units that were expected to be shipped in 2015, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 4.7%
* Nasdaq: Down 12.7%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 10.4%
* S&P 500: Down 10.1%
* FTSE100: Down 7%
* Nikkei225: Down 12.1%
* Hang Seng: Down 12.2%
* Shanghai: Down 17.7%

International:
* The possible acquisition of Bouygues' media and telecommunications assets by Orange.
* The new CEO of Yahoo to replace Melissa Mayer.
* The successful investors for a stake in Sharp.
* The merger of Reliance Communications and Aircel to create the second largest mobile operator in India.
* The winner, as business services companies Cognizant Technology Solutions, NTT Data and Atos SE compete to acquire Perot Systems, an IT management business owned by Dell.
* NEC taking over Indian IT services firm Mphasis, which is majority owned by HP.
* A possible split-up of Lexmark.
* The buyout of CyberArk by Check Point Software Technologies.

Africa:
* The roll-out of more than 1 000 towers by Zamtel.

South Africa:
* More news regarding the Vodacom/Neotel deal.

At the end of each year, Fortune magazine publishes its 'Top 20 People in Business' list. From a technology perspective, the following were included in the list for 2015:

* 2: Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
* 3: Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts
* 4: Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
* 7: Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi
* 8: Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber
* 11: Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet
* 14: Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor
* 16: Francisco D'Souza, CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions
* 19: David Aldrich, CEO of Skyworks Solutions