Softbank makes offer on Uber shares

Numerous market sector forecasts dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, another acquisition by HeroTel was the local highlight of a quiet week.

* Excellent interim numbers from Huge Group, with revenue up 70.6% and profit up 130.4%.
* Satisfactory interim figures from Naspers, with revenue up 5% but profit up 98.9%.
* Mediocre interim numbers from Ansys, with revenue down 23.1% and profit down 19.8%.
* HeroTel acquired Safricom North West, a WISP based in Potchefstroom.
* Ex-Dimension Data chairman Andile Ngcaba has lost an unfair labour practice dispute with his former employer.
* Metrofile Holdings will form a new digital company as part of its ongoing digital transformation, which is intended to be launched in early 2018.
* A new JSE cautionary by Metrofile.
* The appointments of Adrian Bock and the executive chairman, Elliot Salkow, as joint CEOs of Ellies; and Gunter Engling as MD of Huge Telecom.

* Angola will hold a public tender for a fixed and mobile operator, with details due by the end of the month; and it will sell off 45% of state-owned Angola Telecom.
* Orange has started to build its new $50 million headquarters in C^ote d'Ivoire.
* Syspro will open an office in Kenya.

Taiwan-based touch panel maker JTouch has declared bankruptcy.

* Alibaba acquired Israel-based personalised QR code start-up Visualead.
* French technology consultancy company Altran Technologies bought US design and engineering services firm Aricent from a group of investors, led by KKR, for $1.7 billion.
* The Abraaj Group of Emirates International Telecommunications' (EIT) bought a 35% stake in Tunisie Telecom, which controls 65% of Maltese operator Go. EIT also owns a 19.5% stake in Dubai operator du, as well as 26% of Middle East distributor Axiom Telecom. It bought the Tunisie Telecom stake in 2006 for $2.25 billion.
* Paris-based InfraVia Capital Partners purchased Altice's Swiss data centre and telecoms business for EUR180 million.
* Logility, a leading provider of collaborative supply chain optimisation and advanced retail planning solutions, acquired privately held Halo Business Intelligence, a supplier of advanced analytics and business intelligence solutions for the supply chain market.
* McAfee bought Skyhigh Networks, a move that is aimed at fortifying its endpoint and cloud cyber security.
* Proofpoint purchased Weblife, a leader in browser isolation solutions, for $60 million.
* Qualys acquired certain assets of NetWatcher that provide significant domain expertise in building and delivering cyber security and real-time threat intelligence offerings.
* Pantel Technologies and Veecon Media & Television bought Reliance Communications' non-core DTH business Reliance BIG TV.
* T-Systems, the enterprise division of Deutsche Telekom, purchased Itgen, the Hungarian SAP specialist company.
* Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) acquired a 70% stake in Malaysian satellite company TS Global Network (TSGN) for $26 million.
* Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm, bought Barracuda Networks for $1.6 billion.
* Trend Micro purchased Canada-based Immunio, a global leader in cyber security solutions.
* Verisk Analytics acquired PowerAdvocate, an industry-leading provider of market, cost intelligence and supply chain solutions serving the energy sector.
* Zayo bought Spread Networks, a privately owned telecommunications provider, for $127 million.
* Accenture made a minority investment in 1QBit, a leading quantum computing firm based in Canada.
* John Chambers (ex-Cisco) made a 10% investment in speech analytics software company Uniphore Software Systems (India).
* Fujitsu led a $34.9 million investment in 1QB Information Technologies, a software firm.
* A strategic partnership has been formed between Accenture and 1QBit, under which Accenture will be 1QBit's preferred systems integrator. Accenture has also been granted a licence to use the 1QBit platform for demonstration, training and the development and testing of Accenture tools and assets. Accenture will leverage its alliance with 1QBit to develop a quantum-inspired analytics capability through Accenture Analytics and scale pilot opportunities identified through the Accenture Labs.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Apple has filed a countersuit against Qualcomm, alleging that Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile phone chips that power a wide variety of Android-based devices infringe on Apple's patents, the latest development in a long-running dispute.
* Qualcomm has filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple, saying there were 16 more of its patents that Apple was using in its iPhones.
* BlackBerry has been ordered to pay Nokia $137 million by the International Court of Arbitration in a payment dispute, but the former said it would continue to pursue a separate claim over patent infringement.
* Apax, a private equity investor, has sold almost half its stake in Sophos, the UK cyber security group.
* Frontier Communications will replace Contango Oil & Gas Co in the S&P SmallCap 600.
* SoftBank Group is offering to purchase shares of Uber Technologies at a valuation of $48 billion, a 30% discount to its most recent valuation of $68.5 billion.
* Taiwan-based touch panel maker JTouch has declared bankruptcy.
* Good quarterly numbers from VMware.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from American Software, Descartes, Photronics and Tech Data.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Ambarella and MTS Systems.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Marvell Technology Group, with revenue down but profit up; and Semtech, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Aquantia, Autodesk, Box, Guidewire Software, Nuance Communications, Nutanix, Pure Storage, Synopsys, Uber, Workday and Yext.
* The appointment of Vasyl Latsanych as CEO of Veon's Russian unit.
* The resignation of David Karp, CEO and founder of Tumblr, a company that was bought by Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion.

* EMEA/Africa:
* Internet penetration in Africa will reach 21.8% by year-end, according to the ITU.

* Worldwide:
* The installed base of wireless IOT devices in agricultural production worldwide reached 17 million connections in 2016, according to Berg Insight, the M2M/IOT analyst firm. The number of wireless connections is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 10% to reach 27.4 million in 2021
* Virtual reality headset shipments are showing no signs of slowing, as the quarterly total exceeded 1 million units for the first time in Q317, according to Canalys.
* M&A investment in the data centre will reach a staggering $20 billion by the end of 2017, according to CRBE, the global real estate advisor.
* Global notebook shipments are expected to experience a negative 3.2% CAGR in the next five years, to reach 140 million units by 2022, as new consumer devices associated with technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality and flexible displays will emerge to erode consumer patronage for notebooks, according to Digitimes Research.
* Operators could be set for a tough 2018, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, as it predicts revenue in the 60 biggest telco markets will fall by 2% to $1.2 trillion next year.
* There are expected to be 1 billion 5G connections by 2023, according to Ericsson.
* Global sales of smartphones to end-users totalled 383 million units in Q317, a 3% increase over the same period in 2016, according to Gartner. All of the top five smartphone vendors achieved double-digit growth apart from Apple, which achieved a 5.7% increase.
* The worldwide managed cloud services market will grow at a five-year CAGR of nearly 18%, with spending reaching $62.8 billion in 2021, according to IDC.
* Global shipments of personal computing devices (PCDs) - composed of traditional PCs (desktop, notebooks and workstations) and tablets (slate, detachable) - are expected to decline 2.7% year over year in 2017, according to IDC. While this is a slower contraction compared to the previous year, IDC forecasts shipments will decline further (4% year over year) in 2018. Looking towards the end of the five-year forecast, volumes are expected to continue declining from 423.3 million in 2017 to 393.9 million in 2021. This represents a five-year CAGR of -2%.
* Worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality is forecast to reach $17.8 billion in 2018, an increase of nearly 95% over the $9.1 billion expected this year, according to IDC.
* Overall smartphone shipments will steadily grow from 1.5 billion units in 2017 to 1.7 billion units in 2021, according to IDC. Meanwhile, phablets (smartphones with a screen size of 5.5 inches to * The worldwide hardcopy peripherals market grew 1% year over year in 3Q17, with shipments reaching nearly 25.3 million units, according to IDC.
* The worldwide wearables market took another step forward in 3Q17, with total shipment volume reaching 26.3 million units, up 7.3% year over year, according to IDC.
* The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments declined 0.5% year over year in 3Q17, finishing at $2.45 billion, according to IDC. The enterprise segment grew 2.8% year over year in 3Q17 to reach $1.49 billion.
* Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 19.9% year over year to $17 billion in 3Q17, according to IDC. Worldwide server shipments increased 11.1% year over year to 2.67 million units in 3Q17. Volume server revenue increased by 19.3% to $14.2 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 26.9% to $1.4 billion. High-end systems grew 19.4% to $1.3 billion.
* The semiconductor industry continued its upward trend in Q317, notching a 12% sequential growth to $113.9 billion, according to IHS Markit. It projects semiconductor revenue will reach a record high of $428.9 billion in 2017, representing a growth rate of 21% on year.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.4%
* FTSE100: Down 1.5%
* DAX: Down 1.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.9% (highest weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 1.5% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Down 0.6%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.2% (highest 2017 weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Down 2.7%
* Shanghai: Down 1.1%

* International:
* Nokia buying Juniper Networks.
* A possible insolvency from Rcom (India).
* China Mobile, which is set to compete with its rival, China Telecom, in a bid to invest in the bankrupt Brazilian operator Oi.
* Spotify and Tencent Music doing a share swap prior to expected IPOs in 2018.

* Africa:
* Overseas listings for Africa's tower companies.

* South Africa:
* Further information regarding Broadband Infraco.

Fortune magazine has recently published the latest rankings of its 'Future 50', ie, innovative companies it believes are primed for explosive growth. The two lists are for those with annual revenue above $20 billion and those with annual revenue below $20 billion. The rankings include:

* Above $20 billion:
* 1: Salesforce.com
* 3: Facebook
* 4: Netflix
* 6: VMware
* 8: Intuit
* 9: Activision Blizzard
* Below $20 billion:
* 1: Veeva Systems
* 2: Workday
* 4: FireEye
* 7: Yelp
* 8: Tableau Software
* 10: Arista Networks

This is my final column for 2017, although my review of the year will appear next week. My column will resume on 22 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 and successful 2018.