Samsung CEO steps down

The shock resignation of Samsung's CEO dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, Datatec's sell-off was the major story.

* Good interim numbers from Cartrack Holdings, with revenue up 13.7% and profit up 20.6%.
* A negative trading update from ISA Holdings.
* DXC Technology acquired Datatec's subsidiary Logicalis Group's service management consultancy operation.
* HeroTel bought Hi-Tech Wireless, a WISP in Mpumalanga.
* BCX has announced the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary Netcampus. The deal sees current managing executive, Tebogo Makgatho, taking 70% of the company while the remaining 30% will be sold to Telkom FutureMakers, Telkom's enterprise development programme. Netcampus is a leading ICT training solutions provider offering a package of services that consist of technical and soft-skills courses geared for ICT professionals.
* Newtown Partners, an angel investment and seed stage venture capital firm based in Cape Town, has invested in South African fintech start-up Wala, a blockchain-powered financial services platform for the unbanked and underbanked.
* Ansys, a diversified digital technology group, has been recognised as the most empowered JSE-listed company in SA.
* The Ministry of Telecommunications and Postal Services has presented its project to consolidate the entities responsible for regulating the ICT sector in SA. The regulation is currently split between different entities, including the ministry, ICASA, .zaDNA and USAASA. This has resulted in overlapping roles, as well as a lack of co-ordination among the entities. In this regard, the draft law on the Commission and the ICT Tribunal creates a consolidated regulatory body as envisaged in the white paper.
* Withdrawn JSE cautionaries by MICROmega Holdings and Telkom SA.
* The appointment of Willem Roos as CEO of Rain Mobile.

* SA's Musa Group acquired Swanib Cables, a Namibian cable firm involved in utilities, infrastructure and telecommunications.
* iWayAfrica Kenya has secured regulatory approval to acquire the terrestrial and VSAT customer base of Callkey Networks, a Nairobi-based corporate communications service provider and subsidiary of Immarsat.
* Niger's telecoms regulator, the Authority for the Regulation of Telecommunications and Post, has fined the West African country's four mobile network operators a combined XOF3.5 billion ($6.3 million) for failing to improve their network coverage and quality of service indicators.

Ansys has been recognised as the most empowered JSE-listed company in SA.

* Accenture acquired IBB Consulting, a premier strategy consulting firm that helps leading broadband and mobile operators, media companies and technology providers identify emerging industry shifts, adapt to market changes and capitalise on new business and technology opportunities.
* Akamai Technologies bought Nominum, a market leader in DNS and enterprise security solutions for carriers.
* Bharti Airtel purchased Tata Teleservices' wireless mobile business.
* Equinix acquired the Zenium data centre business in Istanbul for $93 million.
* Guidewire Software bought Cyence, a software company that applies data science and risk analytics to enable P&C insurers to grow by underwriting '21st century risks' that have gone underinsured or uninsured.
* IBM purchased Vivant Digital, an Australia-based digital and innovation agency.
* IHS Holding acquired Zain's passive physical infrastructure of its mobile tower portfolio for $165 million.
* Kronologi Asia (Thailand) bought Quantum Storage (Hong Kong).
* Paynear, an Indian financial technology company, purchased Singapore-based GoSwiff, a technology platform that develops apps and software for financial institutions in the digital payments space. The deal was worth $100 million.
* Tibco acquired Cisco's data virtualisation unit, which was bought by the latter four years ago from Composite Software for $180 million.
* Trading Technologies International has acquired Neurensic, a start-up that uses artificial intelligence for market surveillance and compliance.
* Welltok, a leading consumer health enterprise software as a service (SaaS) company, bought Tea Leaves Health, a leading provider of a SaaS-based analytics and marketing technology platform used by hospital systems to target consumers and physicians with co-ordinated engagement campaigns.
* Tencent Holdings made a $400 million investment in Ola, India's rival to Uber.
* BlackBerry signed a new licence agreement with BLU Products, a Florida-based maker of low-end Android phones, which would end patent disputes between the two companies.
* Allegedly, Alphabet's Waymo has sought at least $1 billion in damages and a public apology from Uber Technologies as conditions for settling its high-profile trade secret lawsuit.
* Qualcomm has filed lawsuits in China seeking to halt the manufacture and sale of Apple's iPhones in that country.
* Acer's founder Stan Shih said the company will gradually turn into a holding company, with most of the Acer Group's affiliates transformed into independent entities and listed on stock markets. Before doing so, Acer will increase its shareholdings in these companies to above 50% to have full control of them.
* Alibaba Group Holding is launching a $15 billion drive to build overseas research hubs as the deep-pocketed firm looks to compete with global leaders in e-commerce, logistics and cloud technology.
* Nokia has closed its OZO camera line.
* The Taiwan Fair Trade Commission has fined Qualcomm $774.14 million for anti-trust violations of its chip technology.
* Good quarterly numbers from LG Electronics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Chipbond Technology.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Barracuda Networks, with revenue up but profit down; and Voxx International, with revenue down but profit up.
* The appointments of Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of Northgate Information Solutions, as CEO of T-Systems; and Ronnie Leten as chairman of Ericsson.
* The departures of Reinhard Clemens, CEO of T-Systems; Leif Johansson, chairman of Ericsson; and Kwon Oh-hyun, CEO and vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics.

Worldwide:
* Global production value for high-brightness LED chips in 2017 is estimated at $13.179 billion, growing 2.8% year on year, with the production value increasing 2%-5% annually during 2018-2022, according to Digitimes Research.
* Worldwide PC shipments totalled 67 million units in Q317, a 3.6% decline from Q316, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide public cloud services market revenue is projected to grow 18.5% in 2017 to total $260.2 billion, up from $219.6 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $411.1 billion in 2017, an increase of 19.7% from 2016, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs (desktop, notebook, workstation) totalled 67.2 million units in Q317, which translates into a slight year-over-year decline of 0.5%, according to IDC.
* Global power semiconductor revenue grew year-on-year by 3.9% in 2016, reversing a 4.8% decline in 2015, according to HIS Markit.
* Enterprises worldwide will spend over $470 billion on digital in 2017, and digital spending is likely to increase at a CAGR of over 20% to reach $1.1 trillion-$1.2 trillion by 2022, according to Zinnov, a management consulting firm.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.1% (highest weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 0.2% (record high achieved during the week)
* DAX: Up 1.2% (highest weekend close)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.4% (highest weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 0.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 2.2% (2017 highest weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Up 0.1% (2017 highest weekend close)
* Shanghai: Up 1.2% (2017 highest weekend close)

International:
* T-Mobile US and Sprint news, which are said to be close to completing an M&A deal.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding Dimension Data's African operations.

These are the top 10 strategic predictions presented recently by Gartner:

By 2021, early adopter brands that redesign their Web sites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%.

By 2020, five of the top seven digital giants will wilfully 'self-disrupt' to create their next leadership opportunity.

By the end of 2020, the banking industry will derive $1 billion in business value from the use of blockchain-based crypto-currencies.

By 2022, most people in mature economies will consume more false information than true information.

By 2020, AI-driven creation of 'counterfeit reality', or fake content, will outpace AI's ability to detect it, fomenting digital distrust.

By 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will be spending more per annum on bots and chatbot creations than traditional mobile app developments.

By 2021, 40% of IT staff will be 'versatilists', holding multiple roles, most of which will be business, rather than technology-related.

In 2020, AI will become a positive net job motivator, creating 2.3 million jobs while eliminating only 1.8 million jobs.

By 2020, Internet of things (IOT) technology will be in 95% of electronics for new product designs.

Through 2022, half of all security budgets for IOT will go to fault remediation, recalls and safety failures rather than protection.