Toshiba, Bain seal deal

The fall-out from the Toshiba/Bain deal was the major activity in the international ICT market last week.

At home, the Bytes UK acquisition was the main story.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from Cognition Holdings, with revenue up 60.8% and profit up 5.1%.
* Altron's Bytes Technology Group acquired UK-based Phoenix Software, a specialist in end-to-end IT infrastructure solutions, for £35.9 million.
* Naspers made an additional £579.4 million investment in online food takeaway firm Delivery Hero, buying half the stake of e-commerce investor Rocket Internet.
* The shares of M-FiTEC have been suspended.
* South African-based Ascent Technology is opening its first international office in Dubai.
* Kerridge Commercial Systems, a specialist software provider of integrated ERP software solutions, announced that Integrity Software, which it acquired earlier this year, has been renamed Kerridge Commercial Systems.
* The appointment of Mark McCallum as SA country manager for Orange Business Services.
* The departure of Yannick Decaux, country manager for Orange Business Services SA (he has moved on to a new position within the Orange Group).

Bytes Technology Group acquired UK-based Phoenix Software.

* Alibaba acquired online gaming company Ejoy Technology.
* Envestnet, a provider of intelligent systems for wealth management and financial wellness, bought FolioDynamix, a provider of integrated wealth management technology solutions.
* Flipkart purchased mobile and IT product repair services firm F1 Info Solutions.
* Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, acquired Nets, Scandinavia's largest payments processor, for $5.3 billion.
* NetApp bought Greenqloud, an Iceland-based developer of technology for enterprise-scale cloud management.
* SAP purchased Gigya, a market leader for customer identity and access management.
* Vimeo acquired the live video streaming service Livestream.
* An affiliate of Amazon.com made a $27.6 million investment in Indian retailer Shoppers Stop.
* T-Mobile US made an additional investment for the remaining interest of Iowa Wireless from Aureon.
* Toshiba and a consortium led by Bain Capital Private Equity have signed a deal for the sale of the Toshiba's computer memory chip business for 2 trillion yen ($18 billion). Western Digital has repeatedly opposed the sale, stressing it will continue with legal action.
* Western Digital will seek an injunction to block the sale of Toshiba's prized semiconductor business to a rival group, upping the ante in an acrimonious battle with its chip venture partner.
* The US International Trade Commission has agreed to probe certain WiFi-enabled devices and their parts after Japan's Sharp accused China's Hisense Group of infringing its patents.
* The Alibaba Group will invest 100 billion yuan ($15.12 billion) over five years to build a global logistics network and also take control of a $20 billion unit, underpinning an aggressive overseas expansion. Alibaba is investing 5.3 billion yuan in Cainiao Smart Logistics Network to boost its stake to 51% from 47%.
* The main listed unit of Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco plans to buy investment and financial service assets from an affiliate, Leshi Internet Information & Technology, a video content company, for up to 3 billion yuan ($455.24 million) as part of a restructuring exercise.
* Excellent quarterly results from Micron Technology (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Aehr Test Systems (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Jabil Circuit, Red Hat and Synnex.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Accenture, with revenue up but profit down; BlackBerry, with revenue down but back in the black, CalAmp, with revenue down but profit up; Comtech Telecommunications, with revenue up but profit down; FactSet, with revenue up but profit down; MAMS Software Group, with revenue down but profit up; and Progress Software, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Harte-Hanks and SMART Global Holdings.
* The appointments of Paulino do Rego Barros as interim CEO of Equifax; Mark Fiedler as non-executive chairman of Equifax; Amos Genish as CEO of Telecom Italia; Seamus Grady as CEO of Fabrinet; Gregg Lowe as CEO of Cree; and Vivek Shah as CEO of j2 Global.
* The resignation of Nehemia Zucker, CEO of j2 Global.
* The retirement of Richard Smith, chairman and CEO of Equifax.
* A planned US IPO from Baidu's iQiyi as soon as 2018, which could value China's most popular Netflix-style streaming video service at more than $8 billion.
* An IPO filing in India from Newgen Software Technologies, an Indian software products company.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Switch, a data centre company that aims to raise as much as $500 million, which would make it the third biggest US technology listing of the year.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Roku, a TV streaming platform.
* A good IPO in Finland by Rovio Entertainment, the maker of Angry Birds.

South Africa:
* SA's data shows mobile phone sales decreased by 23% for January to June 2017, compared to the same period in 2016, according to GfK. Also, smartphone unit sales increased by 17% in the same timeframe, while media tablet sales shrank by 40%.

Worldwide:
* In the new professional sub-category that straddles the traditional industrial and personal/desktop markets, 3D printer shipments increased 38% year-on-year in H117, according to Context.
* The worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud market grew 31% in 2016 to total $22.1 billion, up from $16.8 billion in 2015, according to Gartner. Amazon was the number one vendor in the IaaS market in 2016, followed by Microsoft and Alibaba.
* Worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems is forecast to reach $57.6 billion in 2021, according to IDC. With many industries aggressively investing in cognitive and AI solutions, spending is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 50.1% over the 2016-2021 forecast period. Worldwide spending on cognitive and AI systems will total $12 billion in 2017, an increase of 59.1% over 2016.
* Worldwide converged systems vendor revenue increased 6.2% year-over-year to $3.15 billion during the second quarter of 2017 (2Q17), according to IDC. The market consumed 1.78 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up 5.6% compared to the same period a year ago.
* The combined augmented reality and virtual reality headset market is expected to reach 13.7 million units in 2017, growing to 81.2 million units by 2021, with a CAGR of 56.1%, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.5%
* FTSE100: Up 0.9%
* DAX: Up 1.9% (highest-ever weekend close)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.2% (highest weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 0.7% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.1% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 0.3%
* Hang Seng: Down 0.1%
* Shanghai: Down 0.1%

International:
* An IPO from Lyft.

South Africa:
* Dark Fibre Africa, the fibre telecommunications company in which JSE-listed Remgro holds a 50.9% stake, buying the fibre-to-the-home broadband infrastructure provider Vumatel.

Fortune magazine has published its list of 56 companies that are 'changing the world'. Included are:
* 3: Apple;
* 6: Ant Financial, an arm of Alibaba;
* 12: SAS, one of the largest privately owned technology companies;
* 15: Tencent Holdings;
* 16: Vodafone;
* 24: Accenture;
* 25: Microsoft;
* 30: Tata Consultancy Services;
* 35: IBM;
* 36: Salesforce.com;
* 48: Dell Technologies; and
* 49: Palo Alto Networks.

Included in Fortune's list of six rising stars is Tableau Software.