T-Mobile buys Sprint

Paul Booth

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A raft of small acquisitions, including several by the big boys, was the highlight of a quiet international ICT market last week.

At home, another acquisition by 4Sight Holdings was the main local story.

* Positive trading updates from Labat Africa and MTN Group.
* 4Sight Holdings acquired XWES, trading as Ntsika ICT Security.
* USAASA has quietly suspended its CEO, Lumko Mtimde, while he faces misconduct allegations.
* Tariffic, a cellphone bill optimisation company, has closed its business, according to CEO Antony Seeff.
* The appointment of Mark van Vuuren as CEO of Jasco.
* The departure of Pete da Silva, CEO of Jasco (stays on as a non-executive director).

* MTN said its IPO in Ghana will likely happen by the end of this month.
* Zimbabwe telecoms and media group, Econet, has received government licensing for content distribution, Web casting and video on-demand services in the country, under its Econet Media unit.

* Accenture acquired Certus Solutions, one of the UK's top Oracle Cloud implementation service providers.
* Cisco bought AI-driven business intelligence start-up Accompany for $270 million.
* Cognizant purchased Hedera Consulting, a specialist in business advisory and data analytics services across industry sectors.
* HIG Capital, a global private equity investment firm, acquired Conduent's US-based human resource consulting and actuarial business.
* Groupon bought Cloud Savings Company, the parent company of online discount code platform Vouchercloud and brand loyalty provider Giftcloud, in a deal worth $65 million.
* Microsoft purchased Avere Systems, which may allow the former to offer cache and file storage services in private data centres as well as the public cloud.
* Osram acquired US-based Vixar, a technology leader in infrared LEDs and infrared laser diodes.
* Permira bought a large chunk of Cisco's video software business, formerly known as the NDS Group, for $1 billion.
* Platinum Equity purchased Pitney Bowes' production and its supporting software for $361 million.
* ServiceNow acquired Parlo, a provider of an AI and natural language understanding workforce solution.
* Indonesia's human resource (HR) management and accounting platform Sleekr bought local competitor Talenta, a software as a service firm that aims to help small and medium businesses manage their HR processes, such as employee attendance, leave requests, overtime and payroll.
* Tyler Technologies purchased Sage Data Security, a leading expert in cyber security.
* Synchronoss Technologies acquired Dixons Carphone's Honeybee software business, a leading provider of digital solutions targeted at optimising the customer experience.
* A consortium led by TPG Capital Management and Carlyle Group bought Baidu's majority stake in its financial services business for $1.9 billion.
* T-Mobile US purchased Sprint for $26.5 billion, in a move that will create a major competitor to AT&T.
* Yahsat, a leading satellite operator based in the United Arab Emirates, invested a majority stake in the mobile satellite services operator Thuraya.
* Cambridge Analytica, the firm embroiled in controversy over its handling of Facebook user data, and its British parent SCL Elections, are shutting down immediately after suffering a sharp drop in business.
* Panasonic will pay $250 million to settle its US bribery probe.
* A US jury has accused the former CFO of Autonomy of wire fraud and other crimes related to claims by the government that he inflated the firm's value before its sale to Hewlett Packard.
* Very good quarterly figures from Allied Motion Technologies, Alarm.com, Arista Networks, Bandwidth, Blackline (back in the black), Camtek, Cotivity, Equinix, IPG Photonics and Ultimate Software.
* Good quarterly numbers from Activision Blizzard, Ansys, Apple, Arrow Electronics, CDW, Cogent Communications, Commvault Systems (back in the black), CPSI, First Data, Fortinet, II-VI, Insight Enterprises, Insperity, Lumentum (back in the black), Motorola Solutions, Paycom Software, Rudolph Technologies, Systemax, Teledyne Technologies, Tyler Technologies, Veeam Software and Verisk Analytics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, BCE, CACI International, CGI Group, Coherent, Eaton, Fiserv, Harris, Infineon, L3 Technologies, Perficient, Sabre, Seagate, Skyworks Solutions, SS&C Technologies, Swisscom, Unisys, US Cellular, XO Group and Zix.

USAASA has quietly suspended its CEO.

* Mediocre quarterly results from Arc Document Solutions, Cirrus Logic, Engility, FormFactor, Juniper Networks, Key Tronic, Lite-On Technology, NetScout Systems, TransAct Technologies, Transcend, Universal Display and Xerox.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Akamai, Alibaba, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor, American Tower, Axcelis Technologies, Belden, Cerner, Cognex, CSG Systems International, CyberArk Software, Garmin, HCL Technologies, IDT, inTEST, Investment Technology Group, Logitech International, MagnaChip Semiconductor, NCR, NXP Semiconductor, Pitney Bowes, Qualys, Quanta Services, SBA Communications, T-Mobile, Tetra Tech, Tower International, TTM Technologies and Web.com, with revenue up but net income down; and from CommScope, FIS, Global Payments, Monolithic Power Systems, O2 Micro (but back in the black), ON Semiconductor, PC Connection, Shenandoah Telecommunications, Sprint (but back in the black), Telephone & Data Systems and Zayo, with revenue down but net income up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Frontier Communications (but back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from 3D Systems, Acacia Communications, Aerohive Networks, Airgain, Appian, Apptio, Arris International, Boingo Wireless, Bottomline Technologies, Cardtronics, Consolidated Communications, Cray, Diebold Nixdorf, EFI, FireEye, Fitbit, Glu Mobile, GoPro, GTT Communications, ID Systems, Intelsat, Internap, Macom Technology Solutions, Mitek Systems, Mitel Networks, Orbcomm, Pandora Media, Pixelworks, Qorvo, Quantenna Communications, RadiSys, Radware, RealNetworks, Sequans Communications, Shopify, Shutterfly, Sierra Wireless, Snap, Spotify, Square, Stratasys, Tableau Software, Telesat, Teradata, Universal Electronics, Varonis Systems, Viavi Solutions, Windstream, Xperi and Zendesk.
* The appointments of Marcelo Claure as executive chairman of Sprint; Michel Combes as CEO of Sprint; and Helmut Reisinger as CEO of Orange Business Services.
* The departure of Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Facebook.
* A planned IPO from iZettle, the Swedish payments and e-commerce platform.
* An IPO filing for Hong Kong from Xiaomi, which could be the largest floatation since Alibaba in 2014.

Worldwide:
* Global shipments of tablets hit a new quarterly low of 33 million units in the first quarter of 2017, falling 28.2% sequentially and 14.9% on year, according to Digitimes Research. Shipments are expected to fall further to a new low of 31.06 million units in the second quarter.
* Global notebook shipments for the second quarter of 2018 are likely to see a lower sequential growth than recorded in the same period of 2017, and may fall by over 5% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
* Global business value derived from AI is projected to total $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70% from 2017, according to Gartner. AI-derived business value is forecast to reach $3.9 trillion in 2022.
* Growth tops the list of CEO top business priorities in 2018 and 2019, according to a recent survey of CEOs and senior executives, says Gartner. However, the survey found that as simple, implemental growth becomes harder to achieve, CEOs are concentrating on changing and upgrading the structure of their companies, including a deeper understanding of digital business.
* Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 336.1 million units during the first quarter of 2018 (1Q18), resulting in a 2.4% decline when compared to the 344.4 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2017, according to IDC. The China market was the biggest driver of this decline, with shipment volumes dipping below 100 million in the quarter, which hasn't happened since the third quarter of 2013.
* Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $111.1 billion during the first quarter of 2018, an increase of 20% compared to the first quarter of 2017, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.3%
* FTSE100: Up 0.9%
* DAX: Up 1.6%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.2%
* S&P 500: Down 0.2%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.3%
* Nikkei225: Flat (slightly up)
* Hang Seng: Down 1.2%
* Shanghai: Up 0.3%

International:
* More sanctions by the US against China-based technology organisations.

South Africa:
* Moves by the government regarding the rationalisation of its technology portfolios.

Stock markets were generally on a roller coaster in the first quarter of 2018, with some trading days seeing swings of hundreds of points. The Dow Jones Index was down 2.49% in the quarter, although the Nasdaq was up 2.32%.

Overall, 26 of the 44 tech companies on CRN's watch list saw their stock prices increase in the first quarter of 2018, while 18 recorded stock price declines. The list is as follows:

* Seagate Technology up 39.9%
* Nutanix up 39.2%
* Cloudera up 30.6%
* Palo Alto Networks up 25.2%
* Red Hat up 24.5%
* Amazon up 23.8%
* Fortinet up 22.6%
* HPE up 22.1%
* FireEye up 19.2%
* Splunk up 18.8%
* Tableau Software up 16.8%
* Western Digital up 16%
* Carbonite up 14.7%
* Salesforce.com up 13.8%
* Intel up 12.8%
* Cisco up 12%
* NetApp up 11.5%
* F5 Networks up 10.5%
* CommVault Systems up 9%
* Microsoft up 6.7%
* Citrix Systems up 5.5%
* HP up 4.3%
* CA Technologies up 1.9%
* Hortonworks up 1.3%
* Eaton up 1.1%
* IBM just up
* Apple down 0.9%
* Xerox down 1.3%
* Alphabet down 1.4%
* CenturyLink down 1.5%
* AMD down 2.2%
* BlackBerry down 2.3%
* Netgear down 2.6%
* VMware down 3.2%
* Oracle down 3.2%
* Check Point Software Technologies down 4.1%
* SAP down 6.4%
* Symantec down 7.9%
* AT&T down 8.3%
* Lenovo down 8.8%
* Verizon Communications down 9.7%
* Extreme Networks down 11.6%
* Juniper Networks down 14.6%
* Quantum down 35.4%