US imposes ban on ZTE trade

Paul Booth

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The US's pronouncement regarding ZTE dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the events involving 4Sight Holdings took pride of place.

• A positive trading update from Cartrack Holdings.
• 4Sight Holdings acquired Strategix Application Solutions (51%), a software development company that has digitised SHEQ solutions, integrated management systems, integrated business continuity management systems and occupational health and wellness management solutions, as well as integrated environmental sustainability systems.
• 4Sight Holdings has signed a memorandum of understanding with Shenzhen Rongmei Science and Technology Company to establish a 50:50 joint venture in China.
• A new JSE cautionary by Ayo Technology Solutions.
• The appointments of Pierre Bruwer as MD of Altron's Altech Netstar division; and Ed Gassner as CEO of the Britehouse Group, a division of Dimension Data.

• The departure of Paolo Masselli, CEO of the Britehouse Group.

• Morocco's Maroc Telecom made a $50.7 million additional investment (10%) in its Burkina Faso subsidiary Onatel, taking its total stake to 61%.
• After years of talking about more competition, the two licensed newcomers in Togo, GVA and Teolis, have finally launched.
• Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, Nigeria, has stopped the planned sale of 9mobile (formerly Etisalat Nigeria) following the opposition to the transaction raised by some aggrieved shareholders of the company.
• The government of Zimbabwe plans to privatise a large number of state-backed firms, including its assets in the telecoms sector, with NetOne and Telecel and fixed-line operator TelOne all targets for partial privatisation.

• Adobe acquired Sayspring, a start-up that helps developers prototype and build the voice interfaces for their Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant apps.
• Alibaba Group bought Chinese chipmaker Hangzhou C-SKY Microsystems in a move designed to underpin its cloud-based IOT business.
• CDK Global purchased Progressus Media, a specialty provider of mobile advertising solutions for dealerships, agencies and automotive marketing companies.
• IHS Markit acquired DeriveXperts, a provider of valuation services for OTC derivatives and other complex financial securities.
• Ion Investment Group bought UK rival Fidessa, the British trading technology group, for £1.5 billion.
• SmugMug, a photo management platform, bought image and video hosting Web site Flickr.
• Elliot Advisors made an additional investment in Micro Focus.
• Deutsche Telekom made a $6 million investment in Israeli IOT start-up, Axonize.
• Tencent, JD.com and TCL led an investment in Chinese TV maker New Leshi Zhixin.
• Vista Equity Partners made a majority stake investment in the fast-growing software as a service provider LogicMonitor, in a move designed to speed up the innovation engine and boost channel resources.
• Software AG and GFT Technologies have launched their strategic IOT partnership.
• The US has imposed a seven-year ban on American firms selling components to ZTE, allegedly for the latter breaking terms of an agreement on punishing employees reached last year, after it was caught illegally shipping goods to Iran.
• Very good quarterly figures from ASML Holdings, Mellanox (back in the black) and Netflix.
• Good quarterly numbers from Lam Research (back in the black) Limelight Networks (back in the black-just) and Roper Technologies.
• Good year-end numbers from Adyen.
• Satisfactory quarterly results from Alliance Data, China Mobile, Omnicom Group, PTC (back in the black), Rogers Communications, Snap-On, Syntel, TCS and TSMC.
• Mediocre quarterly results from Taiflex Scientific.
• Mixed quarterly figures from Crown Castle International, CTG and IBM, with revenue up but net income down; and from SeaChange International (back in the black), with revenue down but net income up.
• Quarterly losses from Adtran, Atlassian and Ericsson.
• The appointments of Bob Dutkowsky as executive chairman of Tech Data (was CEO); and Rich Hume as CEO of Tech Data.
• A planned IPO in Frankfurt in Q2 from European cloud services firm NFON.
• An IPO filing for Nasdaq from Pluralsight, an enterprise software company committed to closing the global technology skills gap; and Summit Semiconductor, a provider of wireless audio technologies.
• A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by cloud software services company Pivotal Software, a spinoff of EMC and VMware.

EMEA/Africa:

• The EMEA mobile phone market saw smartphone volumes fall for a second year in 2017, while there was a relative boom in shipments of lowly feature phones, a reversal of the previous trend, according to IDC. Smartphone volumes were down modestly at 361 million, against 374 million in 2016. Feature phone shipments rose by 8.7% to 206 million. Smartphone market value was marginally lower in dollar terms at $109 billion.

Worldwide:

• Worldwide ICT spending, including new technologies, is expected to exceed $5.6 trillion in 2021, according to IDC, with growth accelerating through the end of the forecast period as new categories account for a growing proportion of overall investments.

• JSE All share index: Up 1.8%
• FTSE100: Up 1.4%
• DAX: Up 0.8%
• NYSE (Dow): Up 0.4%
• S&P 500: Up 0.5%
• Nasdaq: Up 0.6%
• Nikkei225: Up 1.8%
• Hang Seng: Down 1.3%
• Shanghai: Down 2.8%

International:

• Telefonica listing its Argentinian business unit on the Buenos Aires and New York stock exchanges.

South Africa:

• Further news regarding the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services' redrafting of the controversial Electronic Communications Amendment Bill.

The government of Zimbabwe plans to privatise a large number of state-backed firms.

CRN's annual Security 100 list features 20 vendors that have raised their game to meet the industry's network security needs.

The 20 Coolest Network Security Vendors, as judged by CRN, are:

• Aruba, part of HPE
• Cato Networks
• Check Point Software Technologies
• Cisco
• Cloudflare
• Darktrace
• Extreme Networks
• Fidelis Cybersecurity
• FireEye
• ForeScout Technologies
• Fortinet
• Juniper Networks
• Netskope
• Palo Alto Networks
• ProtectWise
• SonicWall
• Tenable
• Vectra Networks
• WatchGuard Technologies
• Zscalar