IBM takes to the skies

The Lufthansa/IBM outsourcing deal was the main story in a very quiet week in the international ICT market.

At home, Telkom's interim results took much of the local ICT media space.

* Mediocre interim numbers from Telkom SA, with revenue down 0.4% and profit down 61%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Business Connexion, with revenue up 5.5% and profit up 29.2%; and Reunert, with revenue up 7.3% but profit up 102.9%.
* A negative trading update from Ansys.
* Mix Telematics acquired Compass FM, one of its resellers.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by TCS.

* Alain Kahasha was appointed MD of Airtel DRC.

* Kik, a Canadian mobile instant messaging company, acquired Relay, a video messaging company.
* Kock Industries bought Oplink Communications for $445 million.
* KPN purchased the remaining shares of Reggefiber, a Dutch FTTH company, it doesn't already own. The deal was worth EUR610 million.
* Tech Mahindra acquired Lightbridge Communications, a network solutions company, for $240 million.
* Xerox bought Intrepid Learning Solutions, a learning services firm.
* Xiaomi made a $300 million investment in Iqiyi, China's second-largest online video site.
* Apple lost its patent battle with Skytel regarding its two-way pager technology.
* IBM is taking over Lufthansa's IT infrastructure services division, in a deal worth EUR1 billion.
* Aereo, a US video streaming company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* Very good quarterly figures from Aruba Networks (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Pace.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Fujitsu and Reliance Communications.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Autodesk, with revenue up but profit down; Marvell Technology Group, with revenue down but profit up; and Mentor Graphics, with revenue down but profit up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Agilent Technologies.
* Quarterly losses from Intuit, Salesforce.com and Splunk.
* The appointments of Alan Price as interim CEO of Vevo, and Vivek Sood as CEO of Unicor.
* The resignations of Rio Caraeff, CEO of Vevo, and Morten Sorby, CEO of Unicor.
* A planned IPO in early 2015 from GoDaddy, a domain registration provider.
* An IPO filing from HortonWorks, a big data platform company.

South Africa:

* Overall spending in SA is expected to pass the $13 billion mark in 2015, with the consumer market expected to be $3.12 billion, the finance market at $1.88 billion, and government at $1.63 billion, according to IDC. Investment in the telecommunications sector is expected to total $1.42 billion next year.

EMEA/Africa:

* According to the latest Ericsson mobility report, Africa topped 800 million mobile subscribers in Q3 2014, and 85% of the MEA region's mobile subscriptions will be 3G/4G by 2020.
* The EMEA virtual client computing market is expected to grow from $804.9 million in 2013 to $1.181 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 7.5%, according to IDC.
* Mobile Internet subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to reach 37% by 2020, according to the GSMA.
* Africa's GDP will top $3.7 trillion by 2019, up 50% from 2014, according to Deloitte.

Worldwide:

* In 2015, 50% of people considering buying a smart wristband will choose a smart watch instead, according to Gartner.
* Global HDD systems in 2014 are estimated to reach 567 million units, according to Techno Systems Research.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.5% (highest weekend close this year)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1% (highest-ever weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 1.2% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 1.4%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (-8.8%), Gijima (+17.4%), FoneWorx (-8.6%), Reunert (+7.1%), Sekunjalo (+7.6%), Silverbridge Holdings (+9.5%) and Telemasters (+70.6%)

International:

* The possible acquisition of Netflix by Google.
* The possible acquisition by Altice (France) of SFR, in a further consolidation move within the French telecommunications industry.

South Africa:

* Further developments regarding the sell-off by government of its stakes in Telkom and Vodacom.

The African Innovator magazine recently published its "40 African tech start-ups to watch" list. They include:

* 1: AppsTech, a global provider of enterprise application solutions.
* 3: Project Isizwe, a non-profit organisation that aims to bring the Internet to the people of SA, by facilitating the roll-out of free WiFi for public spaces in low income communities.
* 21: Paperight, a company that aims to reduce the cost of buying traditional books by allowing users to print out their own copies downloaded from their storefront.
* 24: Obami, a company with an established social learning management system that serves to connect everyone within the education space.
* 26: Mobi Interactive, a mobile software company that offers mobile application development for a wide range of mobile platforms.
* 32: Clinic Master, a provider of integrated new generation healthcare information management and medical billing software.