Samsung pays IOU to Apple

A handful of small acquisitions were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, the happenings regarding MTN still dominated the local ICT media space.

* Excellent interim numbers from Ansys, with revenue up 92.7% and back in the black.
* Good interim numbers from Prescient, with revenue up 16% and profit up 28.9%.
* Itec acquired a consortium comprising the Itec management team, Investec Bank and Khulasande Capital. Previously, 90% of Itec was owned by founder Jacques Duyver, who is based in the UK.
* Capitalworks bought the PTSI business of Altron subsidiary Powertech for R140 million.
* Datatec (Logicalis) purchased Thomas Duryea Consulting, an Australian ICT services and solutions provider.
* Hengtong acquired PowerTech's (Altron's) stakes in Aberdare Cables and Aberdare International. Hengtong is the fourth largest cable manufacturer in China and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
* Intervid Africa, a security solutions division of United Business Solutions, bought the Workforce Management Solutions line of business from NGA Africa, a company 50% owned by BCX.
* Tritech Media made a 45% investment in local gaming industry innovator GameZBoost.
* PIC made an additional investment in Vodacom, thus raising its stake to 15.4%.
* Stella Capital Partners invested a further R166.7 million in Tellumat, thus raising its stake to 93.14%.
* The Nigerian Communications Commission reduced MTN's fine by 25%, but has since backtracked on this offer.
* The MTN Group is to be restructured into three regions, namely: West and Central Africa (WECA), South and East Africa (SEA), and Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
* A renewed JSE cautionary by MTN.
* The appointments of Jyoti Desai as Group COO of MTN; and Andrew Holden as Altron's operations executive for IT.
* The resignation of Pumla Radebe, chairman of the USAASA and the USAF.
* The retirement of Rob Abraham, a veteran of the IT industry and an executive director at Altron (as from 29 February 2016).

* WeChat Africa plans to invest R50 million in technology start-ups in Africa to support local entrepreneurs and technology innovations. WeChat, which is developed by Tencent, has said it will identify promising tech start-ups via an application and selection process and support their entry to market using the WeChat platform.
* The appointments of Ismail Jaroudi as MTN's VP for its MENA region; Ferdi Moolman as CEO of MTN Nigeria; and Karl Toriola as MTN's VP for its WECA region.
* The resignation of Michael Ikpoki, CEO of MTN Nigeria.

* VimpelCom's Pakistani unit Mobilink acquired Warid Telecom in exchange for Warid's owner, the Dhabi Group, getting a 15% stake in Mobilink.
* Motorola Solutions bought UK-based communications company Airwave Solutions for £817.5 million, in a move intended to beef up its services business.
* Numericable-SFR purchased French cloud computing firm Numergy, in a move designed to build up its services offering for companies. It will buy the 33% stake held by French state-owned lender Caisses des Depots and a 20% stake held by French IT firm Atos.
* Rogers Communications acquired Internetworking Atlantic, a communications technology company that offers a range of IT products to business institutions. The deal will help Rogers provide enhanced technology and enterprise service solutions to its business customers.
* Tillman Capital and TPG Asia bought Reliance Communications' tower assets.
* Wipro purchased cellent, a leading IT consulting and software services company, for EUR73.5 million.
* US private equity fund JMI Equity invested £32 million in Avecto, the UK software house, as cyber security continues to attract interest from investors.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Samsung will finally hand over the more than $548 million it owes for infringing the patents and designs of Apple.
* Computer Sciences has begun trading as two separate companies after the spinoff of its public sector company as CSRA.
* Japan's securities watchdog will recommend that Toshiba Corporation should be fined 7.37 billion yen ($59.84 million) for accounting violations.
* Good quarterly numbers from Avago Technologies and Photronics.
* Mediocre quarterly results from OmniVision Technologies.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Synopsys, with revenue up but profit down; and Verint Systems, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end figures from Sage Group (UK), with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Box, Infoblox, Pure Storage and SeaChange International.
* The appointment of Ian Gray as CEO of Vodafone Qatar.
* The retirement of Napoleon Nazareno, CEO of PLDT and its mobile business Smart Communications.

* South Africa:
* IT spending in SA will top $26.6 billion in 2016 as organisations increasingly embrace digital transformation initiatives in a bid to streamline their costs and bolster their flexibility, according to IDC.

WeChat Africa plans to invest R50 million in technology start-ups in Africa.

* Worldwide:
* The consumer demand for all-in-one PCs remains weak, and with Apple's new high-end iMacs and the price-cut for previous-generation models failing to drive sales, all-in-one PC shipments are expected to decline 3.9% on year in 2015 and reach around 13 million units, according to Digitimes Research. Since the market is unlikely to see any effective expansion, shipments in 2016 are expected to stay flat from 2015 or drop slightly by 0.5% on year.
* The global market for application processors (AP) will rise 8.54% in 2016, according to Digitimes Research. Growth of demand for applications such as automotive electronics and smartwatches will outperform that for smartphones. The global AP market is expected to register a slower-than-expected 7.89% increase in 2015, due mainly to falling shipments of tablet PCs worldwide, and decelerating smartphone shipment growth. Shipments to smartphones will continue to account for the majority of the overall AP shipments in 2015 and 2016, making up more than 80% of the shipments.
* Worldwide server shipments grew 9.2% in Q315, while vendor revenue increased 7.5% year over year, according to Gartner.
* The proportion of 'digital related' consulting engagements will increase from about half of all business and IT consulting engagements in 2013-2015 to approximately 80% of all engagements in 2019, according to IDC, driving the total market for digital strategy services to over $97 billion worldwide by 2019.
* Worldwide tablet shipments will reach 211.3 million units in 2015, down 8.1% from 2014, according to IDC. The new forecast follows three consecutive quarters of declining worldwide tablet shipments in 2015. Despite the challenges facing the overall market, IDC expects detachable tablets will continue to represent a growing portion of total shipments.
* The worldwide production print market continues to show year-over-year growth in unit shipments, gaining 9.9% in 3Q15, with unit shipments up to approximately 10 500 units (printers and MFPs) and shipment values up 5.9% to more than $1.2 billion in the same time period, according to IDC.
* Worldwide large-format printer shipments declined 4% in Q315 when compared to Q3 2014, according to IDC.
* 2015 will be the first full year of single-digit worldwide smartphone growth, according to IDC. It predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will grow 9.8% in 2015 to a total of 1.43 billion units.
* A quarter after Apple debuted as the number two wearables vendor worldwide, Chinese vendor Xiaomi finished the 3Q15 as a strong contender for this position, according to IDC. Similarly, newcomer XTC beat out Samsung as the world's number five wearables vendor. Total shipment volumes for the quarter came to 21 million units, up 197.6% from the 7.1 million units shipped in 3Q14.

* JSE All share index: Down 4.6%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.3%
* S&P 500: Flat (marginally up)
* FTSE100: Down 2.1%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.9%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.8%
* Shanghai: Up 1.8%

* International:
* Japanese electronics companies Fujitsu, Toshiba and Sony Corporation spinoff Vaio combining their PC operations.
* The outcome of the 'restructuring/sell-off' by Yahoo of its various units/investments.
* The listing of the tower assets of America Movil.

* South Africa:
* More news regarding MTN in Nigeria and the Vodacom/Neotel 'deal'.

The fifth annual Thomson Reuters 2015 Top 100 Global Innovators recognises the most innovative companies in the world according to a series of patent-related metrics that get to the essence of what it means to be truly innovative. The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters prepares the list using proprietary data and analysis tools.

Included in the list are, in alphabetical order: AMD, Alcatel-Lucent, Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry, Canon, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Intel, InterDigital, Kyocera, LG Electronics, Microsoft, NEC, NTT, Oracle, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Samsung, Seagate, Seiko Epson, Sony, Symantec and Toshiba.

It's interesting to note the absence of companies such as Dell, EMC, Google, HP, IBM, Nokia and SAP.

This is my final column for 2015, although my 'review of the year' will appear next week. My column will resume on 18 January and will fully cover the intervening period.

A big thank you to all my readers for your support this year; I wish you well over the festive season and a great 2016.