Alibaba settles US lawsuit

Several disappointing quarterly numbers, including those from Alphabet, Apple and Samsung, dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, it was very quiet.

* A positive trading update from AEEI.
* The appointment of Mcebisi Jonas as chairman of the MTN Group.
* The departure of Phuthuma Nhleko, chairman of the MTN Group.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 6.9% and profit up 13%.
* Good quarterly figures from MTN Ghana, with revenue up 21.9% and EBITDA up 38.6%.
* Satisfactory quarterly numbers from Bharti Airtel Africa, with revenue up 6% and back in the black.
* Mixed quarterly numbers from Maroc Telecom, with revenue down 0.5% and EBITDA up 3.7%.
* Airtel Africa is planning to make a formal statement later this month regarding its listing in London. It expects its shares to start trading in June.
* The Econet Group is planning to list its shares in Botswana mobile operator Mascom on that country's stock exchange via an initial public offering, probably in October.
* Subject to approval, Senegalese telecoms giant Sonatel is set to enter the Gambian market following the announcement that it has entered into an agreement for the acquisition of 91.6% of the share capital of XOOM Wireless.

* Accenture acquired Zielpuls, a technology consultancy headquartered in Germany.
* Altice USA bought streaming service Cheddar, the digital-first news company, for $200 million.
* Ansys purchased the assets of DfR Solutions, the developer of Sherlock, the industry's only automated design reliability analysis software.
* Comcast acquired Deep Blue Communications, a WiFi company.
* Tencent-backed Epic Games bought Psyonix, a longstanding partner.
* Electronics For Imaging purchased Turkey-based and privately held BDR Boya Kimya San. Tic., a leading manufacturer of reactive inkjet inks for industrial digital textile printing.
* Smartsheet acquired 10 000ft, a SaaS platform that enables organisations to improve decision-making and forecasting through real-time capacity planning, resource management and reporting.
* SolarWinds bought Canadian password and documentation management firm Passportal, in a bid to offer increased security to its MSP customers around the world.
* Suvarna Technosoft, an Indian healthcare technology firm, purchased a controlling stake in MedPrecinct Solutions, the provider of laboratory information management systems.
* Veritas Technologies bought APTARE, a privately held software company that is a global leader in analytic solutions for hybrid cloud environments and the industry's leading open and extensible IT analytics platform.
* Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup purchased listed French consumer electronics firm Archo.
* Wipro acquired the Philippines-based personal care maker Splash Corporation.
* Engineering behemoth Larsen & Toubro made a 20% investment for a majority stake in Mindtree, the IT services company.
* The Alibaba Group will pay $250 million to settle a US lawsuit faulting the Chinese e-commerce company for concealing a regulatory warning about its ability to stop counterfeiting before it went public in 2014.

Airtel Africa is planning to make a formal statement later this month regarding its listing in London.

* China Telecom has signed a $5.4 billion agreement with the Udenna Corporation to launch Mislatel, the Philippines' long-awaited third telco.
* Iliad chairman Maxime Lombardini has been fined EUR600 000 for insider dealing.
* US digital advertising company Quantcast has become the latest technology firm to be investigated by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner.
* SK Telecom will merge its fixed-line broadband subsidiary, SK Broadband, with its competitor, T-Broad.
* Excellent quarterly results from RealNetworks (back in the black) and SS&C Technologies.
* Very good quarterly figures from Acacia Communications (back in the black), HannsTouch Solution (back in the black), Mercury Systems, Realtek Semiconductor and Universal Display.
* Good quarterly numbers from Alteryx, Arista Networks, Bottomline Technologies (back in the black), Corning (back in the black), CSG Systems International, Discovery (back in the black), FormFactor, Fortinet, Genpact, Global Payments, GoDaddy, Harris, Insperity, L3 Technologies, Motorola Solutions, OSI Systems, Paycom Software, Perficient, Qualys, Quanta Services, Sanmina, TetraTech, Turkcell and Worldpay (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Akamai, Alliance Motion Technologies, American Tower, Ansys, Arrow Electronics, AudioCodes, BCE, CACI International, CDK Global, CGI, Charter Communications, Cogent Communications, Delphi Technologies, Digital International (back in the black), Eaton, Entercom Communications (back in the black), Equinix, Euronet Worldwide, Fair Isaac, First Data, Garmin, Leidos, Logitech International, MediaTek, Monolithic Power Systems, OpenText, PC Connection, Radware (back in the black), Rogers, Saudi Telecom, Systemax, TDS, Trimble, US Cellular, Verisk Analytics and Zebra Technologies.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Activision Blizzard, AMD, Apple, ASE Technology Holding, CalAmp, Chunghwa Telecom, Cirrus Logic, Coherent, CommVault Systems, CPSI, DISH Network, FIS, IPG Photonics, LG Electronics, Maxim Integrated Products, Orange, Samsung, Seagate Technology, Sensata Technologies, Silicon Motion Technologies, Skyworks Solutions and Tower International.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alphabet, AMC Networks, Brooks Automation, Carbonite, Cognex, Cognizant Technology Solutions, CRA International, Faro Technologies, Fiserv, GrafTech International, II-VI, Inmarsat, MKS Instruments, NetScout Systems, ON Semiconductor, Sabre, SBA Communications and Tyler Technologies, with revenue up but net income down; and from America Movil, Belden, Cardtronics (but back in the black), Changyou.com (but back in the black), China Telecom, Etisalat, Insight Enterprises, Lattice Semiconductor (but back in the black), Qualcomm, Telesat (but back in the black), Veon (but back in the black), Wiwynn and ZTE (but back in the black), with revenue down but net income up.
* Quarterly losses from Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, Altice USA, Amkor Technology, Appian, Arlo Technologies, Bandwidth, BlackLine, Casa Systems, Cree, Diebold Nixdorf, Digimarc, Extreme Networks, FireEye, Fitbit, Five9, Flex, Forrester Research, Frontier Communications, Groupon, ID Systems, Impinj, Inovalon, Inphi, Intellicheck, Intelsat, InterDigital, Kulicke & Soffa, LSC Communications, MagnaChip Semiconductor, MaxLinear, MicroStrategy, Mitek Systems, NeoPhotonics, NXP Semiconductor, O2Micro International, Orbcomm, PDF Solutions, Pitney Bowes, Pixelworks, Quad/Graphics, Quantenna Communications, Rapid7, Shopify, Shutterfly, Sogou, Sohu.com, Spotify Technology, Square, Stratasys, Tableau Software, Tenable, Teradata, TTM Technologies, Twilio, Unisys, Universal Electronics, Upland |Software, Varonis Systems, Viavi Solutions, Western Digital, Zendesk, Zix and Zynga.
* The appointments of William Grubbs as chairman of Volt Information Sciences; and former ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman as CEO of Snowflake Computing.
* The departure of Bob Muglia, CEO of Snowflake Computing.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Yunji Global, a leading social e-commerce platform in China.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide tablet shipments amounted to 37.15 million units in Q119, down 12.9% sequentially, but up 13.8% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
* Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 310.8 million units in 1Q19, which marked the sixth consecutive quarter of decline, according to IDC. In 2018, smartphone shipments dropped 4.1% over 2017, which was inclusive of a first quarter that was down 3.5%, just half of what the market experienced in 1Q19.
* Worldwide sales of semiconductors totalled $96.8 billion during Q119, a decrease of 15.5% over the previous quarter and 13% less than the first quarter of 2018, according to SEMI.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.7%
* FTSE100: Down 0.6%
* DAX: Up 0.8%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.1%
* S&P 500: Up 0.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: No change
* Hang Seng: Up 1.6%
* Shanghai: Down 0.3%

International:
* Mitel buying fellow UC provider Avaya in an all-stock merger valued at between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion that could help the two companies battle cloud-based competitors such as Cisco and Microsoft.
* A buyer for Verizon's Tumblr.

Africa:
* Kenya's Safaricom seeking a CEO to replace Bob Collymore, the current incumbent.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the investigations at EOH.

The 2019 Big Data 100 is CRN's annual ranking of the most important big data technology vendors that solution providers should be aware of. As with prior years, the list includes many of the IT industry's biggest vendors and established suppliers of data management and business analytics products. But it also includes several start-ups and young companies with breakthrough technologies that solution providers could offer, thus providing themselves and their customers with a competitive edge.

This year's list is made up of four big data technology categories: big data business analytics; big data management and integration; big data systems and platforms; and data science and machine learning.

Included in the big data business analytics list are:
* Alteryx
* Anodot
* Arcadia Data
* Attivio
* Datameer
* Domo
* GoodData
* Incorta
* Infor Birst
* Information Builders
* Kyvos Insights
* Logi Analytics
* Looker
* MicroStrategy
* OmniSci
* Outlier
* Periscope Data
* Plotly
* Qlik
* SAS
* Sisense
* Sumo Logic
* Tableau Software
* ThoughtSpot
* Tibco
* Zoomdata

Included in the big data management and integration software list are:
* Actian
* Actifio
* Alation
* AtScale
* Cazena
* Confluent
* Couchbase
* Databricks
* Datastax
* Delphix
* Dremio
* EnterpriseDB
* Erwin
* Fivetran
* Fluree
* Iguazio
* Imanis Data
* InfluxData
* Informatica
* Infoworks
* Magnitude Software
* MariaDB
* MarkLogic
* Matillion
* MemSQL
* MongoDB
* Neveego
* Neo4j
* Optopai
* Paxata
* Pepperdata
* Qubole
* Redis Labs
* Reltio
* SnapLogic
* Splice Machine
* Splunk
* SQream Technologies
* StreamSets
* Striim
* Syncsort
* Talend

The other two lists from the 2019 Big Data 100 will follow next week.