Spotify hits the right note

Paul Booth.

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The buy-out of Verifone systems by a private equity group was the main story of a quiet international ICT market last week.

At home, the non-listing of Sagarmatha was the main local ICT event.

* A full-year loss from Sagarmatha Technologies, although revenue up 49.4%.
* A positive trading update from Altron.
* Mint Group invested in South African CRM consultancy Liquid CRM.
* The JSE said the listing of Sagarmatha Technologies cannot proceed because of non-compliance with several listing requirements.
* The first direct subsea fibre-optic cable system that will connect SA to Brazil, and eventually to the US, is set for commercial launch in 2020.
* The appointments of Kholiwe Makhohliso as country manager of Software AG SA; and Reshaad Sha as CEO of Liquid Telecom South Africa.
* The departure of Mohamed Cassoojee, country manager for Software AG SA.

* The appointments of Mike Dube as Altron's MD for its 'rest of Africa' operations; and Sylvia Mulinge as CEO of Vodacom Tanzania.
* The departure of Ian Ferrao, CEO of Vodacom Tanzania.

* Altaris Capital Partners acquired Analogic, a provider of leading-edge healthcare and security solutions, for $1.1 billion.
* Asure Software bought OccupEye, a provider of a sensor-based solution that allows organisations across the world to streamline operations, create efficiencies, enhance productivity and analyse employee engagement, which generates cost savings and creates a more employee-focused workplace.
* HCL Technologies, along with private equity firm Sumeru Equity Partners, purchased Actian, a hybrid data management, analytics and integration company, for $300 million.
* Francisco Partners led the acquisition of payments technology company Verifone Systems for $3.4 billion.
* Infosys bought Wongdoody, a US-based, full-service creative and consumer insights agency.
* Palo Alto Networks purchased Israel-based Secdo. This acquisition brings sophisticated endpoint detection and response capabilities, including unique data collection and visualisation, to Palo Alto Networks Traps advanced endpoint protection and the Application Framework in order to enhance their ability to rapidly detect and stop even the stealthiest attacks.
* Spotify acquired Loudr.fm, a provider of licensing technology to help it to locate songwriters and pay them royalties they are due.
* Uber Technologies bought electric bicycle service Jump Bikes.
* WeWork purchased China-based rival Naked Hub.
* Alibaba led a $600 million investment in SenseTime Group, China's facial recognition technology developer.
* JP Morgan, the world's biggest investment bank by revenue, invested in AccessFintech, the developer of an analytics platform that pools banks' post-trade data.
* British gambling technology company Playtech invested EUR846 million (70.6%) in Italian betting and gaming firm, Snaitech, in a move to source most of its revenue from regulated markets.
* Apple has lost the latest round of a patent dispute with VirnetX over secure messaging features in its apps, which could see the company forced to pay $502 million in another twist in an eight-year legal battle.

Apple has lost the latest round of a patent dispute with VirnetX.

* Avanti Communications, a UK satellite company, will be put into administration unless shareholders accept a debt-for-equity swap that would allow it to raise fresh funding.
* Very good quarterly figures from Wistron.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from GIS, Infosys and Realtek.
* Mediocre quarterly results from ASE, Asustek, ChipMOS Technologies, HTC, Largan Precision, MediaTek and TPK.
* Quarterly losses from Shaw Communications.
* The appointments of Steve Collar as president and CEO of SES; and John-Paul Hemingway as CEO of SES Networks.
* The resignations of Telia Sweden's CEO H'el`ene Barnekow; and Lucy Peng, chairman of Alibaba's Ant Financial.
* A planned IPO on the London Stock Exchange in May from Avast, the world's largest consumer anti-virus supplier by customers.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Zuora, a firm that provides cloud-based software on a subscription basis.

* Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 6.2% from 2017, according to Gartner.
* At the end of 2017, worldwide CRM software revenue overtook that of database management systems, making CRM the largest of all software markets, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide PC shipments totalled 61.7 million units in Q118, a 1.4% decline from Q117, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 21.4% in 2018 to total $186.4 billion, up from $153.5 billion in 2017, according to Gartner.
* Technology purchases funded by line of business (LOB) are forecast to overtake purchases funded by the IT organisation in 2019, according to IDC. Businesses are forecast to spend $1.6 trillion on technology (hardware, software, and services) in 2018. Roughly half of that spending (50.5%) will come from the IT budget, while the other half (49.5%) will come from the budgets of technology buyers outside of IT. The former includes IT-funded purchases as well as joint projects funded by IT. The latter includes business-funded purchases as well as joint projects funded by LOB buyers and "shadow IT" projects funded by the LOB without IT involvement. LOB technology spending has been growing at a faster rate than IT spending for a number of years. The CAGR for LOB spending over the 2016-2021 period is forecast to be 6.9% compared to the 3.3% CAGR for IT spending.
* Total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments is expected to total $52.3 billion in 2018, with year-over-year growth of 10.9%, according to IDC.
* Worldwide smartphone ODM QView, smartphone ODM and EMS assembly shipments decreased 13.8% year-on-year in 4Q17, due to weakening market demand, according to IDC. This was a slight quarter-on-quarter growth of 2.1%.
* Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs (desktop, notebook and workstation) totalled 60.4 million units and recorded flat year-on-year growth in 1Q18, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.2%
* FTSE100: Up 1.1%
* DAX: Up 1.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.8%
* S&P 500: Up 2%
* Nasdaq: Up 2.8%
* Nikkei225: Up 1%
* Hang Seng: Up 3.2%
* Shanghai: Up 0.9%

International:
* Alphabet's Google buying Nokia Oyj's airplane broadband business.
* Sprint and T-Mobile US merging.

Africa:
* Telkom Kenya merging its operations with Bharti Airtel's local unit as a first step to acquiring all of Airtel's assets, creating a stronger challenger to market leader Safaricom.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the listing of Sagarmatha Technologies.

Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters published its listing of the top 100 global technology leaders. The top 10 included:
* Accenture
* Alphabet
* Apple
* Cisco
* IBM
* Intel
* Microsoft
* SAP
* SMIC
* Texas Instruments

An analysis of the 100 shows the country split as follows:
* Australia: 1
* Canada: 2
* China: 3
* Finland: 2
* France: 3
* Germany: 2
* Hong Kong: 1
* India: 5
* Ireland: 1
* Japan: 13
* Korea: 3
* Netherlands: 2
* Sweden: 1
* Switzerland: 2
* Taiwan: 13
* UK: 1
* USA: 45