Still big spending on smartphones

Paul Booth.

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Microsoft's latest acquisition, the ZTE/US changes and the Chinese deal involving Arm Holdings dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, another acquisition by HeroTel and ones by Community Investment Ventures Holdings and a Dimension Data subsidiary were the main local stories.

* Community Investment Ventures Holdings, a shareholder in Dark Fibre Africa and majority owned by Remgro, acquired 34.9% of fibre-to-the-home pioneer Vumatel. The former also plans to buy the remaining 65.1% soon, subject to funding and regulatory approvals.
* HeroTel bought VTN Communications, a provider of voice solutions.
* Dimension Data and its subsidiary Merchants purchased Canadian business process outsourcing solution provider Millennium 1 Solutions, from private equity firm The Gores Group.
* ICT services company Ulwembu Business Services acquired 70% of Smart Integration, an integrated automation company.
* The Hawks raided the offices of MTN Group and those of its external legal counsel, Webber Wentzel, apparently over the ongoing legal dispute with rival Turkcell.
* Yekani Manufacturing, a black-owned electronics contract manufacturer, has launched a smart factory worth R1 billion in the East London Industrial Development Zone. The company's flagship brand is Yekani, which includes educational two-in-one tablets, laptops and consumer products, such as mobile handsets and laptops.

* China Telecom Global, a subsidiary of China Telecom, and Liquid Telecom, a pan-African telecoms group, have signed a historic strategic partnership whereby the companies will collaborate to provide Africa and Asia with network solutions and services.
* Egypt's telecoms industry grew by 9.5% and its ICT sector by 4.5% in Q1 2018, according to the country's Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform.
* Tanzanian prosecutors have charged two CEOs of mobile phone companies, and four other suspects, with fraud as part of a crackdown against tax evasion in the East African nation. The executives charged were Le Van Dai, 35, MD of Halotel Tanzania, owned by Vietnam-based telecoms operator Viettel, and Sherif El Barbary, MD of Zantel, a majority stake in which was acquired by Millicom International Cellular in 2015.
* The appointments of Nora Wahby as head of Ericsson West Africa; and Mass Thiam as CEO of Tigo Senegal.
* The retirement of Lars Stork, CEO of Vodafone Zambia.
* The departure of Mitwa Kaemba Ng'ambi, director general of Tigo Senegal.

* Capgemini acquired Leidos Cyber, the commercial cyber security arm of Leidos.
* Chinese investors bought SoftBank-owned UK chip designer Arm's majority interest in its Chinese semiconductor design unit. The deal was worth $775.2 million (51%) and the new entity will run as a joint venture.
* Fortinet purchased Bradford Networks, further enhancing the Fortinet Security Fabric by converging access control and Internet of things security solutions to provide large enterprises with broader visibility and security for their complex networks.
* Kuaishou, a Chinese online short video start-up backed by Internet giant Tencent Holdings, acquired AcFun, an animation and video platform, amid an intensifying battle over online content.
* Microsoft has agreed to buy GitHub, the code repository company popular with many software developers, for $7.5 billion.
* PayPal Holdings purchased Jetlore, a start-up that provides a prediction platform by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.
* Qualys acquired Second Front Systems in a deal that is expected to provide increased domain expertise in building and delivering cyber security solutions tailored for the US federal government, including defence, intelligence and law enforcement.
* Sharp bought Toshiba's personal computer business, highlighting its recovery under the control of Foxconn and marking a return to a business it quit eight years ago. The deal was worth $36 million.
* Vista Equity Partners purchased a majority stake in Integral Ad Science, a digital advertisement measuring firm.
* KKR and Goldman Sachs made a $360 million investment for a significant minority stake in Portugal-based OutSystems, a platform that allows individuals to write software using very little coding. The deal sees the value of the company reach more than $1 billion.
* NTT DoCoMo Ventures invested in Inbenta Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based provider of artificial intelligence-powered natural language processing products.
* Solar wafer manufacturer Sino-American Silicon Products made a $33.29 million investment in Taiwan Special Chemical, the latest in a string of mergers and acquisitions it has launched to deepen its diversification into the semiconductor industry.
* YY made a $272 million investment in Bigo, a fast-growing global video-based social media platform, headquartered in Singapore.
* Twitter will replace Monsanto in the S&P 500.
* ZTE has signed an agreement in principle that would lift a US Commerce Department ban on buying from US suppliers, allowing China's number two telecommunications equipment maker to get back into business. Under the deal, ZTE will change its board and management within 30 days, pay a $1 billion fine and put $400 million in escrow. The government will suspend the 10-year ban, but can reactivate it if there are any violations.
* Ant Financial Services Group, a spin-off from Alibaba, operator of China's biggest online payment platform, has raised around $14 billion in what market watchers called the biggest single fundraising globally by a private company.
* Paul Jacobs, the former Qualcomm CEO who was ousted as chairman of the chipmaker's board earlier this year, is launching a new start-up, Xcom, which is focused on developing advanced wireless technology, even as he continues pursuing a plan to take his former company private.
* Good quarterly numbers from Broadcom and Comtech Telecommunications.
* Mixed quarterly figures from YY, with revenue up but net income down.
* Quarterly losses from Ambarella, Cloudera, Coupa Software, Dell Technologies, DocuSign, Guidewire Software, Huya, MongoDB, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, pdvWireless, SeaChange International, SecureWorks, Smartsheet, Verifone, Verint, Volt Information Sciences and Zscaler.

The Hawks raided the offices of MTN Group.

* The appointments of Mark Liu as chairman of TSMC (was co-CEO); Lowell McAdam as executive chairman of Verizon Communications (was CEO); Hans Vestberg as CEO of Verizon Communications; and CC Wei as CEO and vice-chairman of TSMC (was co-CEO).
* The resignation of Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Group.
* An IPO filing for mainland China from Xiaomi.
* A postponed IPO on the NYSE by M17 Entertainment, operator of the largest live streaming platform by revenue in developed Asia.
* A very good IPO in the Shanghai market by Foxconn Industrial Internet, a unit of Foxconn.

South Africa:
* South Africans bought 3.2 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2018, a 12.4% increase year-on-year, according to GfK.

EMEA/Africa:
* The MEA personal computing devices market, which is made up of desktops, notebooks, workstations and tablets, declined 5.3% year-on-year in Q118, according to IDC. Shipments fell to around 5.7 million units for the three-month period, which represents the lowest quarterly volume recorded for more than six years.
* In the first quarter of 2018, the EMEA server market reported a year-on-year increase in vendor revenue of 35% to $3.9 billion, and a year-on-year increase of 2% in units shipped to 542 000, according to IDC.
* The total EMEA external storage systems value increased almost by 24% in dollars in the first quarter of 2018, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Global shipments of all-in-one PCs are set to grow more robustly in 2018 and see its ratio to the global desktop PC shipments continue to rise, according to Digitimes Research.
* A significant shift towards digital business models that harness technology trends such as cloud computing, Internet of things, analytics and artificial intelligence is boosting worldwide spending on application infrastructure and middleware (AIM), according to Gartner. Numbers show the AIM market revenue reached $28.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 12.1% from 2016.
* The worldwide Ethernet switch market (layer 2/3) recorded $6.29 billion in revenue in 1Q18, a healthy increase of 10.9% year-over-year, according to IDC. Meanwhile, the worldwide total enterprise and service provider router market recorded $3.31 billion in revenue in 1Q18, a 1.4% decrease on a year-over-year basis.
* Worldwide shipments of wearable devices grew 1.2% during 1Q18 as shipments reached 25.1 million units, according to IDC. Growth for the market was far lower than the 18% year-over-year growth one year ago, largely due to the 9.2% decline in shipments of basic wearables.
* The combined consumer and enterprise wireless local area network market segments decreased 1.3% year-over-year in 1Q18, with worldwide revenue of $2.24 billion, according to IDC.
* The total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue grew 34.4% year-over-year during 1Q18 to $13 billion, according to IDC. Total capacity shipments were up 79.1% year-over-year to 98.8 exabytes during the quarter.
* The total security appliance market saw positive growth in both vendor revenue and unit shipments in 1Q18, according to IDC. Worldwide vendor revenue increased 14.3% year-over-year to $3.3 billion, and shipments grew 18.9% year-over-year to 838 098 units.
* Worldwide industrial semiconductor revenue grew by 11.8% year-over-year, reaching $49.1 billion in 2017, according to IHS Markit.
* Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings came to $17 billion in Q118, up 12% sequentially and 30% on year, and hitting a record high, according to SEMI.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.7%
* FTSE100: Down 0.3%
* DAX: Up 0.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.8%
* S&P 500: Up 1.6%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 2.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.5%
* Shanghai: Down 0.3%

International:
* Reaction from Microsoft's competitors following its latest acquisition.
* News regarding Google, which is expected to be hit with a second EU anti-trust fine in mid-July for using its dominant Android mobile operating system to squeeze out rivals.

Africa:
* Developments in Ethiopia following the government's announcement regarding the opening up of its telecommunications sector.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the MTN/Turkcell legal fight.

Fortune magazine recently published its 2018 Fortune 500 rankings. The following technology company changes include:

New entries:
* 374: DXC Technology (created from CSC and part of HPE)
* 466: Conduent (part of the Xerox split)
* 492: ON Semiconductor

Major departures:
* CSC (merged with part of HPE to create DXC Technology)
* Level 3 Communications (acquired by CenturyLink)
* Symantec (now 586: was 465)
* Yahoo (acquired by Verizon Communications)

Major upward movements:
* 389: Adobe (was 443)
* 201: Applied Materials (was 265)
* 417: Insight Enterprises (was 473)
* 354: Lam Research (was 440)
* 292: Leidos Holdings (was 381)
* 377: Liberty Media (was 491)
* 150: Micron Technology (was 226)
* 261: Netflix (was 314)
* 306: Nvidia (was 387)
* 158: Western Digital (was 217)

Major downward movements:
* 407: Harris (was 363)
* 107: HPE (was 59)
* 432: NCR (was 409)
* 495: NetApp (was 468)
* 291: Xerox (was 162 before split)