Renesas buys Integrated Device Tech for $6.7bn

Paul Booth.

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The Renesas acquisition of IDT dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, AYO's acquisition of Sizwe was one of the top stories.

* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Alaris Holdings, with revenue up 17.4% and profit up 0.3%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Metrofile, with revenue up 23.9% but profit down 10.1%; and Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue up 1.9% but profit down 55%.
* A negative trading update from AYO Technology Solutions.
* HeroTel acquired Radioactive Telecommunications, a Hoedspruit-based wireless Internet service provider that provides high-speed wireless connections to the Lowveld community in Limpopo province.
* Online real estate agency PropertyFox bought Cape Town-based low commission digital property agent Steeple. The former is a smart online real estate agent founded by entrepreneurs Ashley James and Crispin Inglis.
* Ayo Technology Solutions purchased 55% of Zaloserve, which in turn owns 100% of Sizwe Africa IT. The deal was worth R165 million.
* Vodacom Group and YeboYethu have completed their R16.4 billion BEE transaction, the biggest BEE deal in the ICT sector to date.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by MTN and Stella Capital Partners.

* Good half-year numbers from Telekom Networks Malawi, with revenue up 16.5% and profit up 46.8%.

* Bomgar acquired BeyondTrust, creating an 800-employee privilege security behemoth with more than 19 000 customers and $300 million in combined annual bookings. The combined company will adopt the BeyondTrust name and be led by Matt Dircks, who has served as Bomgar's CEO since May 2014.
* FLIR Systems bought Acyclica, a leading developer of software for automotive roadway and intersection data generation and analysis.
* Infosys purchased Fluido, a Salesforce consulting partner in the Nordics.
* Intel acquired NetSpeed Systems, which provides interconnect fabric technology and design tools for the system-on-a-chip, a kind of integrated circuit also known as SoC that brings together all the components of a computer, including processor, memory and storage, onto a single chip.
* Microsoft bought Lobe, a start-up that focuses on making it easy to train and deploy artificial intelligence models.
* Renesas Electronics purchased Integrated Device Technology for $6.7 billion. This is its second major acquisition as it deepens its push into semiconductors for self-driving cars. The deal comes on the heels of last year's purchase of US chipmaker Intersil for $3.2 billion, which also expanded its portfolio of analogue chips.
* Science Applications International acquired Engility Holdings for $2.5 billion, in a deal that will turn it into the second-largest independent US government services contractor.
* Twilio bought Ytica, a long-time partner that provides highly customisable contact centre reporting, speech analytics and workforce optimisation software to enhance agent performance in the contact centre, and provides businesses a unified view of the way they engage with their customers.
* Zendesk purchased FutureSimple, the company behind Base, which is known for building modern, easy-to-use sales force automation software designed to help salespeople do their jobs more effectively.
* Hong Kong-based fund manager Baring Private Equity Asia made a $450 million investment in Japan-based Pioneer.

Microsoft bought Lobe, a start-up that focuses on making it easy to train and deploy artificial intelligence models.

* Lenovo and NetApp formed a strategic partnership.
* Alibaba Group Holding has set up a joint venture with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, mobile operator Megafon and Internet group Mail.ru.
* iQiYi founder and CEO Gong Yu was named "Businessman of the Year" by GQ China.
* America Movil has cut its stake in KPN to 16%.
* Yahsat, a leading global satellite operator based in the UAE and wholly owned by Mubadala Investment Company, and Hughes Network Systems, a subsidiary of EchoStar, have entered into a joint venture to provide commercial Ka-band satellite broadband services across Africa, the Middle East and southwest Asia.
* Excellent quarterly results from Renren.
* Very good quarterly figures from Adobe.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from SAIC.
* Mixed quarterly figures from MAM Software Group, with revenue up but net income down.
* Quarterly losses from Impinj, Pivotal Software and Sonos.
* The appointments of Lloyd Carney as chairman of Nuance Communications; K Guru Gowrappan as CEO of Oath; Chris Koziol as CEO of Aspect Software; Charles Meyers as CEO of Equinix; and Daniel Zhang as chairman of Alibaba.
* The resignation of Zane Burke, president of Cerner.

EMEA/Africa:
* The MEA personal computing devices market, which is made up of desktops, notebooks, workstations and tablets, declined 7.7% year-on-year in Q218, according to IDC. The research shows that shipments fell to around 5.4 million units for the three-month period, which represents the lowest quarterly volume recorded for more than seven years.

Worldwide:
* Global smartphone AP shipments may show a 0.8% on-year decline to reach 1.59 billion units in 2018, according to Digitimes Research.
* The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.3% in 2019 to total $206.2 billion, up from $175.8 billion in 2018, according to Gartner. Gartner forecasts the market will grow 21% in 2018, up from $145.3 billion in 2017.
* The worldwide market for smart home devices inclusive of connected lights, smart speakers, connected thermostats, smart TVs, home monitoring/security products, digital media adapters and more, grew 38.5% to 130.1 million shipments in 2Q18, according to IDC.
* The total security appliance market experienced positive unit shipment and revenue growth for 2Q18, according to IDC. Worldwide revenue for the second quarter increased 11.1% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year to $3.6 billion. Unit shipments experienced similar growth, increasing 9.9% quarter-over-quarter and 25.3% year-over-year to 921 278 units.
* Worldwide revenue for the virtual network functions market in 2017 stood at $2.5 billion across all segments, according to IDC. In 2018, IDC expects VNF revenue to double as early 5G deployments take shape and as wireline initiatives such as vCPE, CORD, and HERD gain further momentum. From this point onward, IDC expects the overall VNF market to grow to $16.4 billion in 2022 at a CAGR of 45.4%.
* The worldwide wearables market is forecast to ship 122.6 million units in 2018, up 6.2% from the 115.4 million units shipped in 2017, according to IDC. This will be the first year of single-digit year-over-year growth for the wearables market, mostly due to continuing softness among basic wearables (devices that do not run third-party applications). However, double-digit growth will return in 2019 and through the rest of the forecast, as smartwatches and new form factors gain acceptance. In 2022, IDC expects total shipment volumes will reach 190.4 million units, resulting in a CAGR of 11.6% over the five-year forecast.
* Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings, which hit a record high of $17 billion in Q118, slipped 1% sequentially to $16.7 billion in the second quarter, according to SEMI.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.9%
* FTSE100: Up 0.4%
* DAX: Up 1.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.9%
* S&P 500: Up 1.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.4%
* Nikkei225: Up 3.5%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.7%
* Shanghai: Down 0.8%

International:
* Adobe Systems buying Marketo, a privately held cloud-based marketing software company.

South Africa:
* Further news on the MTN/Nigeria situation.
* A new chairman at MTN.

Forbes magazine recently published its 2018 list of Asia's Fab50. Included in this list are (in alphabetical order and all China-based unless mentioned otherwise):

* AAC Technology Holdings
* Alibaba
* CyberAgent (Japan)
* LONGi Green Energy Technology (a new entrant)
* Luxshare Precision Industry
* NetEase
* Netmarble (South Korea; a new entrant)
* Sunny Optical Technology Group
* Tech Mahindra (India)
* Tencent Holdings
* Zhejiang Dahua Technology