Semiconductor industry undergoes fusion

Liberty Global's acquisition of C&W, and the further consolidation within the semiconductor sector stole the headlines in the international ICT market last week.

At home, the termination of the Telkom-Cell C discussion was the main local ICT story.

* Good interim figures from Cartrack Holdings, with revenue up 18.1% and profit up 13.2%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Telkom SA, with revenue up 5.7% but profit down 43.7%.
* A mixed trading update from Naspers.
* The listing on AltX of M-FiTEC, the financial technology investment holding company.
* Allied Mobile Africa has signed a strategic finance and partnership agreement with the Public Investment Corporation for a debt funding facility of $55 million intended to drive the company's growth in SA as well as its expansion on the rest of the African continent.
* Orange, together with the other members of the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) consortium, announced the start of the next phase of the ACE submarine cable system to expand broadband connectivity and digital services in Africa. For phase two, the ACE submarine cable system is being extended to SA, a 5 000km extension from the island of Sao Tom'e and Principe, in the Gulf of Guinea.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by MTN.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Telkom SA.
* Telkom SA has terminated its discussions regarding the acquisition of Cell C.
* The appointment of Mark Barnes as CEO of the SAPO.
* The resignation of Mark Pamensky, COO of Blue Label Telecoms.
* The suspension of Frans Matlala, group CEO of the SABC, only four months after his appointment.

* The Zimbabwe government acquired a majority stake in the country's second largest telecoms operator, Telecel Zimbabwe, from VimpelCom, for $40 million. This heralds the state's dominance in the southern African country's crucial and fast developing industry.

Telkom SA has terminated its discussions regarding the acquisition of Cell C.

* Cisco acquired Acano, a collaboration company, in a move by the former to expand its video conferencing and other collaboration businesses. The deal was worth $700 million.
* Getronics, an IT services provider, bought Colt's Managed Cloud business, enabling it to provide pan-European cloud services to customers.
* Liberty Global purchased Cable & Wireless Communications in a move that extends the former's European cable empire deeper into Latin America. The deal was worth EUR3.5 billion.
* ON Semiconductor acquired Fairchild Semiconductor International for $2.4 billion, the latest in a rapidly consolidating semiconductor industry. Intel said in June it expects to close its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera Corporation within six to nine months, while Avago Technologies looks to close its $37 billion buyout of Broadcom by the end of the first quarter of 2016.
* Pandora Media bought struggling online music service Rdio's assets for $75 million, in a move that will allow Rdio to shut down its service and seek chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* ViaWest, a hybrid IT solutions provider, purchased INetU, a customer-centric solutions provider for public, private and hybrid cloud environments, coupled with deep managed security and compliance services. The deal was worth $162.5 million.
* The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by manufacturers of liquid crystal displays that are contesting claims they infringe on a patent held by Eidos Display.
* Apple did not infringe five antipiracy patents owned by a Pendrell subsidiary, a US jury has found at trial in a Texas federal court. The jury also found Apple did not prove the patents were invalid.
* Garmin said the ITC issued a final determination in the investigation brought by Johnson Outdoors against it. The ITC concluded first-generation Garmin SideV"u scanning sonar products were too similar to some claims of one of the three patents asserted by Johnson Outdoors. The ITC ordered these Garmin products be excluded from import into the US. However, the ITC is allowing Garmin to freely import these products temporarily, and further recommended Garmin be allowed to freely import modified products permanently. The ITC found Garmin did not infringe Johnson Outdoors' two other patents.
* Citrix Systems will spin off its GoTo business into a separate listed company.
* Very good quarterly figures from Weibo (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Hon Hai Precision Industry.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Mentor Graphics and NetApp.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Agilent, with revenue down but back in the black; and Sina, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Asure Software, Autodesk, Gilat Satellite Networks, Intuit, JD.com, Nuance Communications, Salesforce.com, Splunk and Workday.
* The appointments of Jesper Hansen as CEO of Telenor Denmark; and Doug Merritt as CEO of Splunk.
* The resignation of Joe Garner, CEO of Openreach.
* The retirement of Godfrey Sullivan, CEO of Splunk.
* The death of Gene Amdahl (92), who was credited with many of the technologies used in modern computing. He was IBM's chief architect in the 1960s, overseeing the development of the System/360 mainframe range, which employs technologies that are still central to computing today.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Square.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by Match Group, the owner of popular dating site Match.com and mobile app Tinder.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Mimecast, a provider of next-generation cloud security and risk management services.

Worldwide:
* Continued demand for affordable smartphones in emerging markets drove worldwide sales of smartphones in Q315, according to Gartner. Global sales of smartphones to end-users totalled 353 million units, a 15.5% growth over the same period in 2014. The availability of affordable smartphones in emerging markets saw consumers upgrade their feature phones to smartphones more quickly because of the small price gap. Smartphone sales in emerging markets rose to 259.7 million in Q315, 18.4% over Q314; while sales in mature markets saw growth of just 8.2% over the same period. Huawei replaced Lenovo as the number three player behind Samsung and Apple.
* Worldwide personal and entry-level storage shipments declined 13.4% year over year to 16.7 million units in Q315, but were up 10.3% compared to the previous quarter, according to IDC. Shipment values declined along with unit shipments, down 19.8% from a year ago to $1.3 billion.

* JSE All share index: Up 2%
* Nasdaq: Up 3.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 3.4%
* S&P 500: Up 3.3%
* FTSE100: Up 3.5%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.6%
* Shanghai: Up 1.4%

International:
* A fine by Japan's securities watchdog on Toshiba of about seven billion yen ($57 million), in what would be a record in the country for accounting-related violations.
* The outcome of the bids for PMC-Sierra following Microsemi's new bid. It still seems the former prefers Skyworks' bid.
* The outcome of the bids for Pericom Semiconductor following Montage Technology Group's raised offer. The other contender is Diodes.

Africa:
* The outcome of a $14 billion lawsuit against Vodacom regarding its DRC operations.
* The outcome of an appeal by MTN against a R9.3 million fine in Uganda.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the Vodacom-Neotel deal.

The following are a few extracts from Gartner's worldwide survey, gathered from almost 3 000 CIOs across 84 countries.

Bimodal IT disciplines lead to better digital performance

According to Gartner, as a digitally disruptive decade emerges, bimodal IT is becoming real and increasing digital performance. It captures the platform characteristic of continuously building and refactoring capabilities for the future, and delaying bimodal IT is the worst thing a CIO can do.

In EMEA, 39% of the surveyed CIOs are on the bimodal journey, and 27% are planning to undertake it in the next three years. The survey showed 13% of CIOs do not plan to move towards bimodal IT. Although bimodal IT is becoming a reality, Gartner is finding the bimodal tactics that are least adopted are those that have the most impact on digital strategy performance, and vice versa.

The survey showed only 7% of EMEA CIOs who are on the bimodal journey are adopting crowdsourcing, which delivers the highest impact, while 79% of them are developing multidisciplinary teams, which have less impact.

Shortages of talent and money are biggest barriers to success for EMEA CIOs

In EMEA, 17% of the CIOs said the difficulty of finding talent was one of the biggest issues standing in the way of achieving their objectives, and 59% of CIOs said there is a talent crisis. Seventeen percent also said money was an issue, which is strongly connected to it. The talent pool and talent management practices are not keeping up with the ever-increasing and changing needs of the digital world, and it would be madness to think continuing the same old human resource management practices will solve the problem.

EMEA CIOs leading digital transformation and innovation efforts

Forty-three percent of the CIOs in EMEA indicated they are leading a digital transformation, and 33% identified themselves as the innovation leaders in their organisations. In EMEA, 69% of the CIOs have a strong partnership with their CEO.