Qualcomm scrutinised from all sides

AT&T and Cable & Wireless made some notable acquisitions; and the EU and US investigations into Qualcomm were the main international ICT stories last week.

At home, the results from Sekunjalo and the resignation of Iqbal Surve as chairman of that group took up much of the local ICT media space.

* Good Q1 numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 26.6% and profit up 107.8%.
* Good interim numbers from Mix Telematics, with revenue up 9.3% and profit up 15.2%.
* Good year-end figures from Sekunjalo Investments, with revenue up 9% and profit up 236.8%.
* A negative trading update from Telkom SA.
* Ansys acquired the remaining 25% of Parsec and the remaining 20% of Redline Telecommunications SA for R92.2 million, giving Parsec 100% of all three entities. Parsec develops and produces customised electronic subsystems and products, and Redline is a wireless and data infrastructure solutions provider.
* Value+Nettwork made a 37% investment in Colony, a provider of a message aggregation tool.
* Gian Visser, CEO of Afrihost, won the IITPSA's IT Personality of the Year award for 2014; and Tshifhiwa Ramuthaga, CIO of the Financial Services Board, won the Visionary CIO title. In addition, Ahmed Ismael, director of the Siyafunda Community Technology Centre, received special recognition for service to the community.
* Entelect Software has won the small company section and the IT category of Deloitte's 'Best company to work for survey 2014'. In addition, XLink Communications was the winner in the telecommunications and media, TV, radio and press category.
* The Business Times 'Top 100 Companies' awards winners were announced. From a technology perspective, EOH came in at number two, Mix Telematics at number 12, Naspers at 15 and Metrofile at 24. Also included were (alphabetically) Datatec, MTN, Mustek, Pinnacle Holdings and Vodacom.
* Nashua Mobile has closed all its retail stores.
* LoginPT has launched Future Pavilion, an initiative that has brought a host of innovative technology products, solutions and services from Portugal to SA. Some of the companies include Altitude Software, Compta, Factis, Glintt, Innovation Makers, Newhotel Software, Primavera BSS and Winsig.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Ansys.
* The appointment of Vukile Mehana as non-executive chairman of Sekunjalo Investments.
* The resignation of Iqbal Surve as executive chairman of Sekunjalo Investments.

* IHS, the Nigerian phone tower group, has raised $2.6 billion to finance infrastructure spending and recently agreed on acquisitions.

* Altice (France) has proposed a EUR7 billion offer for Portugal Telecom.
* Aetna, a US-based health insurer, acquired Bswift, a software and technology services company, for $400 million.
* AT&T bought Iusacell, Mexico's third-largest wireless operator, for $1.7 billion.
* Cable & Wireless purchased Columbus International, a Caribbean and Central American telecoms group, for $3 billion.
* A Carlyle-led consortium purchased Dealogic, a US-based researcher, for $700 million.
* Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (China) acquired Stats ChipPAC (Singapore), two entities operating in the semiconductor technology space, for $780 million.
* Publicis Groupe (France) bought Sapient, a US-based digital advertising specialist, for $3.7 billion.
* Raytheon purchased Blackbird Technologies, a cyber security organisation, for $420 million.
* Rovi acquired Fanhattan, a content discovery and navigation innovator.
* Teradyne bought most of the assets of Avionics Interface Technologies, a provider of avionics data buses.
* Bharti Softbank, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Softbank, made a 36.5% investment in ScoopWhoop, an entertainment start-up.
* Qualcomm is the focus of regulatory investigations in both Europe and the US, in addition to the one currently under way in China.
* Telefonica has been fined EUR26 million by Spanish regulators for anti-competitive behaviour.
* Mark Pincus, a co-founder of Zynga, is launching an app development company called Superlabs.
* Xiaomi, the number one smartphone vendor in China, said annual revenue last year exceeded $4.2 billion.
* Excellent quarterly results from Arista Networks and Skyworks Systems.
* Good quarterly numbers from AOL, Fair Isaac, GCI, Nvidia and Qualys.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amdocs, Capgemini, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Diodes, ePlus, j2 Global, Lenovo, Level 3 Communications (back in the black), Liberty Global (back in the black), Qualcomm, Sykes Enterprises, Tata Communications, Telus, Unimicron and ViaSat.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Acer (but back in the black), CenturyLink (but back in the black), CSC, Motorola Solutions, Symantec and Windstream.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alibaba, with revenue up but profit down; Cablevision Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Deutsche Telekom, with revenue up but profit down; DirecTV, with revenue up but profit down; Gartner, with revenue up but profit down; Genpact, with revenue up but profit down; Kulicke & Soffa, with revenue up but profit down; Orbotech, with revenue up but profit down; Sapient, with revenue up but profit down; TeleTech, with revenue up but profit down; TPK, with revenue up but profit down; and Zebra Technologies, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Acxiom; AVG Technologies, with revenue down but profit up; Checkpoint Systems; Convergys, with revenue up but profit down; Earthlink Holdings; FireEye; Guidance Software; Imation, Interactive Intelligence; Ixia; Kratos; Oclaro; RealNetworks; Rovi; Rudolph Technologies; SBA Communications; SMIC, with revenue down but profit up; Sprint; Stratasys; SunEdison Semiconductor; Sypris Solutions; Systemax; Tableau Software; web.com; Zayo; and Zynga.
* The appointments of Martin Jetter as head of IBM's technology services unit; Stephen Kelly, the UK government's former COO, as CEO of UK-based Sage Group; and Barry Plaga as interim CEO of Guidance Software.
* The resignation of Victor Limongelli, CEO of Guidance Software.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Upland Software, a provider of cloud-based enterprise software.

EMEA/Africa:
* The number of unique mobile subscribers will pass the 500 million mark in 2020, according to the 2014 GSMA report.
* By 2018, the MEA region will have the second-highest cloud workload growth rate (39%) and will see data centre traffic reach 366 exabytes per annum compared to 68 exabytes per year in 2013, according to the latest Cisco Global Cloud Index.

Worldwide:
* Public IT cloud services spending is forecast to reach $56.6 billion in 2014 and grow to more than $127 billion in 2018, according to IDC.
* The worldwide IOT market is expected to grow from $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $3.04 trillion in 2020, a CAGR of 13%, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.7%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.04% (highest close this year)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.1% (highest-ever weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 0.7% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 0.3%
* Top SA share movements: Altron (-7.4%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-7.2%), ISA (-5.3%), MTN (-7.3%), Sekunjalo (-13.2%) and Silverbridge Holdings (+17.6%)

International:
* The possible acquisition of AVG Technologies by another security-focused technology provider.
* The raising of about $1.5 billion in funding by Xiaomi, giving the company a market value in excess of $40 billion.

Africa:
* The possible acquisition by MTN or Vodacom of a stake in Oi's African assets (Africatel).

South Africa:
* The departure of Alpheus Mangale from Cisco SA, where he is the MD. It is rumoured that he is going to MTN.

The Boston Consulting Group has just published its 'Top 50 Most Innovative Companies' list. From a technology perspective, the following were included:
1: Apple
2: Google
3: Samsung
4: Microsoft
5: IBM
6: Amazon
9: Facebook
10: Sony
11: HP
13: Intel
14: Cisco
17: LG Electronics
20: Dell
23: Lenovo
30: Softbank
35: Xiaomi Technology
36: Yahoo
39: Oracle
43: TCS
47: Tencent Holdings
50: Huawei Technologies

Gian Visser, CEO of Afrihost, won the IITPSA's IT Personality of the Year award for 2014.

In addition, IDC has announced the predictions from its FutureScape for CIO Agenda:
1. By 2017, 80% of the CIO's time will be focused on analytics, cyber security and creating new revenue streams through digital services.
2. By 2016, 65% of global competitive strategies will require real-time third platform IT-as-a-service.
3. By 2016, security will be a top three business priority for 70% of CEOs of global enterprises.
4. By 2015, 60% of CIOs will use DevOps as their primary tool to address the speed and sprawl of mobile, cloud and open source applications.
5. By 2016, 80% of CIOs will deliver a new architectural framework that enables innovation and improved business decision-making.
6. By 2020, 60% of CIOs in global organisations will be supplanted by the chief digital officer for the delivery of IT-enabled products and digital services.
7. By 2016, 80% of CIOs will accelerate third platform migration to counter premature obsolescence of current IT assets.
8. By 2018, 30% of CIOs of global organisations will have rolled out a pan-enterprise data and analytics strategy.
9. By 2017, 35% of vendor sourcing relationships around third platform technologies will fail, causing CIOs to roll out new sourcing processes.
10. By 2018, 50% of CIOs will relinquish IT's traditional mode of technology control in favour of an open standards-based framework.

"The transformations brought about by the third platform are having significant effects on how the business uses IT, how IT is delivered, and how the IT organisation is structured. Insightful CIOs will seize the opportunity to be key players in this transformation and elevate their role in the enterprise," commented Michael Rosen, adjunct research advisor with IDC's Research Network.