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Sprint makes a dash for T-Mobile

Paul Booth
By Paul Booth
Johannesburg, 09 Jun 2014

The Sprint/T-Mobile US deal and the planned IPO of Samsung's holding company were the main international ICT stories last week.

Vodafone plans to move its Silicon Valley innovation centre to London.

At home, MTN's investment in Afrihost and the BT/De Beers deal stole much of the local ICT media space.

Key local news

* Satisfactory year-end figures from MiX Telematics, with revenue up 8.6% and profit up 18%.
* Morvest Business Group acquired certain business assets and liabilities of Simmonds, a bedding manufacturer, for R75 million.
* MTN invested (a majority share) in Afrihost, a major local hosting and ISP player.
* Nomosphere, part of the Nomotech Group and a French carrier WiFi specialist, has opened an office in Johannesburg, its first subsidiary office outside of France.
* BT Group has won a $37 million IT deal with De Beers.
* The appointments of Graham Beneke to the National Broadband Advisory Council; Miles Crisp as CEO of MB Technologies; Brian Gouldie as CEO of one of MTN's operating companies; Skip Kinford as president and CEO of MiX Americas business; and Willem van Biljon as co-CEO of takealot.com.

Key African news

* A full-year loss from NCR Nigeria, an IT services provider. Revenue was also down by just over 5%.
* The death of Carey Eaton, co-founder of One Media Africa.

Key international news

* Alibaba made a $192 million acquisition (50%) of Guangzhou Evergrande, China's most successful soccer club.
* Apple bought Spotsetter, a social maps app.
* Chegg purchased InstaEDU, an on-demand tutoring service, for $30 million.
* Deltek acquired Axium, a provider of integrated project management and accounting software.
* Dropbox bought Droptalk, a start-up that provides a tool that allows users to share links privately with friends via a Chrome extension.
* Facebook purchased Pryte, a mobile data plan firm.
* KKR, a major private equity firm, acquired Internet Brands for $1.1 billion.
* Sprint proposed a $32 billion acquisition of T-Mobile US, the third and fourth mobile network operators, to create the third major telecommunications player in the US, behind AT&T and Verizon Communications.
* Twitter bought Namo Media, a mobile ads specialist.
* Samsung has settled its patent litigation with InterDigital.
* Toshiba is suing Powerchip over a memory chip patent.
* Broadcom is looking to exit its cellular baseband business.
* Vodafone plans to move its Silicon Valley innovation centre to London.
* Good quarterly numbers from Verint Systems (back in the black).
* Quarterly losses from Ciena and VeriFone.
* The appointment of Elizabeth Buze as co-CEO of Monitise, a mobile payment player.
* A planned IPO by Samsung Everland, the de-facto holding company of the Samsung Group.
* A planned IPO in NY and Tokyo from Line, a messaging app that is owned by Asia's Navia Corporation.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Arista Networks.

Research results and predictions

EMEA/Africa:

* The MEA tablet market grew 77.3% in Q1, with shipments reaching 4 million units and Samsung retaining the number one slot, according to IDC.
* The African hardcopy peripherals market grew 17.7% in Q1, according to IDC.

Worldwide:

* Mobile subscriptions will exceed the world's population next year, although the strongest growth will be in connecting machines and appliances to the Internet, according to Ericsson.
* By 2016, 25% of the top global banks will have launched a banking app store for customers, according to Gartner.
* The 'Internet of things' solutions market is likely to grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020, according to IDC.
* The worldwide hardcopy peripherals market grew 2.1% in Q1 to 26.4 million shipments, according to IDC.
* Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenue fell 5.2% in Q1, with HP rising to the number three slot ahead of IBM (was number three) and Hitachi (was number four), according to IDC.
* The worldwide software market is forecast to grow 5.9% this year, according to IDC.

Stock market changes

* JSE All share index: Up 0.6%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.9%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.2% (highest-ever close at just under the 16 925 level)
* S&P 500: Up 1.3% (highest-ever close at just under the 1 950 level)
* FTSE100: Up 0.2% (highest weekend close this year at nearly the 6 860 level)
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+20.5%), Blue Label Telecoms (-6.8%), Gijima (-7.7%), Huge Group (+9.1%), Jasco (+10%), Poynting Holdings (+23.4%), Silverbridge (+8.4%), Telemasters (-17.2%) and Telkom SA (+6.9%)

Look out for

International:

* The acquisition by Twitter of SoundCloud, an online music firm.
* The appointment of Vishal Sikka, a former SAP executive, as the new CEO of Infosys.
* A possible IPO later this year by EE, the UK-based mobile network.
* A bid by Orange for Bouygues Telecom, in a French telecommunications market consolidation move.

South Africa:

* Further developments regarding the local telecommunications market consolidation.

Final word

BrandZ recently announced its annual rankings of the world's top brands. The following are some observations from this top 100 listing that sees technology companies dominating the top 20, with 11 entries:

* Google has displaced Apple as the top brand for the first time. They remain number one and two;
* IBM at number three (same as last year);
* Microsoft at four, up from five, and displacing McDonald's;
* AT&T at eight, down from six;
* Amazon.com at 10, up from 14;
* Verizon Communications at 11, up from 12;
* Tencent at 14, up from 21 and the top Chinese entry;
* China Mobile at 15, down from 10;
* SAP at 19 (same as last year) and top German entry;
* Vodacom at 20, down from 17 and top UK entry;
* Facebook at 21, up from 31;
* Baidu at 25, up from 33;
* Oracle at 45, down from 36;
* eBay at 61, down from 47;
* BT Group at 64, up from 94;
* Yahoo at 69, up from 92;
* Twitter, a new entry at 71;
* LinkedIn, a new entry at 78;
* Intel at 86, down from 61; and
* MTN at 93, down from 79 and the only South African entry.

Other technology entries include Accenture, Cisco, DoCoMo, HP, MTS, Orange, Samsung and T-Mobile.

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