Twists and turns in smartphone war

A handful of small acquisitions and more IPO activity were the main features of the international ICT market last week.

At home, the announcements involving Blue Label Telecoms dominated the local ICT scene.

* SMSPortal acquired Bulktext.ie, Ireland's largest bulk SMS provider, in a move designed to increase the former's European footprint.
* Blue Label Telecoms made a R5.5 billion (45%) investment in Cell C.
* Net 1 UEPS Technologies made a R2 billion (15%) investment in Blue Label Telecoms.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Blue Label Telecoms.
* The appointments of Robin Frew as chairman of MiX Telematics; and Simon Harvey as CEO of FibreCo Telecommunications.
* The resignation of Arif Hussain, CEO of FibreCo Telecommunications.
* The departure of Richard Bruyns as chairman of MiX Telematics (remains as a director).

* Interswitch, a digital payments and commerce company, bought value-added network solutions firm Vanso.

Lam Research and KLA-Tencor have called off a planned $10.6 billion merger.

* Akamai acquired Soha Systems, an innovator in enterprise secure access delivered as a service.
* Cognizant Technology Solutions bought Norway-based Frontica Business Solutions, an IT solutions provider, for $128 million.
* DirectCash Payments purchased First Data's Australian retail ATM and managed services ATM portfolio for $55 million.
* eBay acquired Israel-based Corrigon, a provider of image recognition technology.
* HNA EcoTech bought IT outsourcing firm Pactera Technology International, owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group. The deal was worth $675 million.
* L-3 Communications purchased Aerosim, a commercial training company within the aerospace industry.
* MBK Partners and TPG Capital Management acquired Wharf Holdings, Peter Woo's Hong Kong telecoms unit, for $1.2 billion.
* Nokia bought Eta Devices, a base station energy solutions start-up.
* Salesforce.com purchased Krux, a marketing data software start-up, for $700 million.
* Samsung Electronics acquired artificial intelligence platform developer Viv Labs, a firm run by a co-creator of Apple's Siri voice assistant program.
* StorageCraft Technology bought Gillware Online Backup, in a move designed to expand its existing cloud, recovery and backup platform.
* Ultimate Software purchased Kanjoya, a cloud workforce intelligence provider.
* A federal appeals court reinstated a $120 million jury award for Apple against Samsung, in another stunning twist in the fierce patent war between the world's top smartphone manufacturers.
* Lam Research and KLA-Tencor have called off a planned $10.6 billion merger, announced nearly a year ago, citing opposition by the Justice Department on anti-trust grounds.
* Orange becomes the majority shareholder of Groupama Banque, soon to be renamed Orange Bank, after attaining approval from French and European regulatory and prudential authorities.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from CSI.
* Satisfactory year-end revenue figures from Ernst & Young and PwC.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Comtech Telecommunications, with revenue up but profit down; and Global Payments, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Micron Technology.
* The appointments of Bill Barney as co-CEO of Reliance Communications; Joe Burton as CEO of Plantronics; and Gurdeep Singh as co-CEO of Reliance Communications.
* The resignation of Vinod Sawhny, CEO of Reliance Communications.
* A planned IPO from cyber security start-up Tanium in the next 18 months.
* A planned IPO from Snapchat, probably early in the New Year.
* A planned IPO in November on the London Stock Exchange by Misys Group, the UK-based software firm, in what could be the largest listing this year in the UK.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Coupa Software, a provider of spend and procurement management software.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Everspin Technologies, a worldwide leader in designing, manufacturing and commercially shipping discrete and embedded Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) and Spin-Torque MRAM into markets and applications where data persistence and integrity, low latency and security are paramount.

Worldwide:
* End-user spending for the worldwide virtual personal assistant (VPA)-enabled wireless speaker market will reach $2.1 billion by 2020, up from $360 million in 2015, according to Gartner. By 2020, 3.3% of global households are forecast to have adopted a VPA-enabled wireless speaker.
* Worldwide combined shipments for devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are expected to decline 3% in 2016, according to Gartner. This will mark the second consecutive year of decline. The global devices market fell by 0.75% in 2015.
* Worldwide revenue for big data and business analytics will grow from $130.1 billion in 2016 to more than $203 billion in 2020, according to IDC.
* Sales of infrastructure products (server, storage and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 14.5% year-over-year to $7.7 billion in Q216, ahead of renewed hyperscale growth expected in the second half of 2016, according to IDC.
* Total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments will increase by 16.2% in 2016 to $37.4 billion, according to IDC. Public cloud data centres, at 18.6% annual growth, will account for the majority (62.5%) of this spending. Overall spending on IT infrastructure deployed in off-premises cloud environments (public and private) will reach $28.4 billion in 2016. In comparison, spending on enterprise IT infrastructure deployed in traditional, non-cloud, environments will decline 1.8% in 2016, but it will still account for the largest share (63.1%) of end-user spending. All figures exclude double counting between server and storage.
* Worldwide mobility revenue is forecast to grow from $1.5 trillion in 2016 to more than $1.7 trillion in 2020. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 2.2%, or roughly $40 billion in annual revenue gains.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.6%
* FTSE100: Up 2.1% (highest weekend close since May 2015)
* DAX: Down 0.2%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.4%
* S&P 500: Down 0.7%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.4%
* Nikkei225: Up 2.5%
* Hang Seng: Up 2.4%
* Shanghai: No change

International:
* Lenovo Group buying Fujitsu's personal computer business, allowing the Japanese company to focus on IT services and other businesses.
* The de-listing of America Movil from Nasdaq.

Africa:
* Peach Payments, a South African fintech start-up, opening in Kenya and Nigeria.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the future of Broadband Infraco.

Fortune magazine recently published its 2016 list of the world's most powerful women outside the US. The list includes:
* 4: Chua Sock Koong, group CEO of Singapore Telecom
* 23: Serpil Timuray, regional CEO, AMAP for Vodafone
* 30: Dominique Leroy, CEO of Proximus
* 32: Maggie Wei Wu, CFO of Alibaba
* 34: Jennifer Li, CFO of Baidu
* 36: Jean Liu, president of Didi Chuxing
* 38: Sun Yafang, chairman of Huawei Technologies
* 48: Zhou Qunfei, CEO and founder of Lens Technology