Digital TV fails to switch on in Nigeria

Google was fined a record EUR2.4 billion by the EU last week, while at home Blue Label's acquisition was the main story.

* A negative trading update from PBT Group.
* The R1.9bn acquisition by Blue Label Telecoms of 3G Mobile Proprietary, one of Africa's largest distributors and financiers of mobile devices and handsets to major retailers and cellular network providers.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Blue Label Telecoms.

* The announcement that Nigeria did not meet the 17 June deadline it set to complete the switchover from analogue to digital broadcast. The Nigerian Broadcasting Commission has since announced its intention to complete the switchover process in 12 of the country's 36 states by the end of December.

Google has been fined EUR2.42 billion by the EU for illegally favouring its own shopping service.

* Accenture acquired Intrepid, a mobile design and development firm.
* Apple purchased SensoMotoric Instruments, a company that specialises in eye-tracking.
* Cennox, the closely held cash-machine maker, has agreed to buy Diebold Nixdorf's UK and Ireland business.
* GTT Communications bought Global Capacity, a provider of network connectivity solutions that simplify the process of connecting enterprises to high-value cloud and business destinations.
* Microsoft acquired Cloudyn, a cloud cost optimisation vendor.
* The $49 million acquisition by Progress Software of Kinvey, an app development specialist.
* ScanSource bought POS Portal, a distributor of payment devices and services primarily to the SMB market segment.
* The $1 billion additional investment by Alibaba to boost its stake in Lazada Group, an e-commerce company based in Southeast Asia. With the additional funding, China's leading online retailer's stake goes to 83% from 51%.
* Western Digital is suing its joint venture partner Toshiba for $1 billion re the sale of the latter's memory chip division. The latter has counter-sued.
* The announcement that France's JCDecaux will create a joint venture with Mexican telecommunications group America Movil by merging their out of home advertising businesses.
* Google has been fined EUR2.42 billion by the EU for illegally favouring its own shopping service.
* Private equity company KKR & Co has sold its entire stake in Norwegian software company Visma for £1.4 billion to a group of investors that includes Singaporean wealth fund GIC.
* Taiwan's knowledge-based start-up INT Tech and LCD driver IC maker UltraChip have set up a joint venture, Ultra Display, which will focus on development of driver ICs for AMOLED panels.
* Vodafone New Zealand and Sky Network Television have abandoned their EUR2.16 billion merger.
* Lumenate, a company providing security, virtualisation, storage, networking and collaboration services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
* Excellent quarterly results from Micron Technology (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Paychex.
* Mixed quarterly figures from FactSet Research, with revenue up but profit down; Progress Software with revenue down profit up; and Shaw Communications with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from CalAmp.
* The appointment of Jeffrey Hedberg (an ex CEO of Telkom SA) as CEO of Wind Tre, the joint venture between CK Hutchison's 3 Italia unit and Veon's Wind.
* The resignation of Tim Westergren, co-founder and CEO of Pandora Media.
* The retirement of R Seshasayee, chairman of Infosys (as from May 2018).
* The departure of Maximo Ibarra, CEO of Wind Tre and the CEO of Wind when the EUR21.8 billion deal with 3 Italia was agreed.
* A planned IPO in Australia from Amazon-backed US home security start-up Scout Security.
* An IPO filing for the NYSE from Alibaba-backed Best, a logistics and supply chain company that integrates the online and offline retailer.
* A planned IPO in Singapore by NetLink NBN Trust, the broadband subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications, in what will be the largest new listing in Singapore in more than four years.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Tintri, a developer of an enterprise cloud platform combining cloud management software technology and a range of all-flash storage systems for virtualised and cloud environments.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to IDC, EMEA purpose-built backup appliance vendor revenue declined 12% year-on-year to reach $191m in Q117.
* According to IDC, in Q117 the EMEA server market reported a year-on-year decline in vendor revenue of 12.7% to $2.7 billion and a year-on-year decrease of 1.4% in units shipped to just over 530 000.

Worldwide:
* According to Gartner, the supply chain management market will exceed $13 billion in total software revenue by the end of 2017, up 11% from 2016. It is on pace to exceed $19 billion by 2021, as software as a service enables new revenue opportunities.
* According to IDC, the growth of new technologies including the Internet of things (IOT), robotics and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) will drive the next wave of growth in the ICT industry, enlarging the overall market opportunity to $5.5 trillion by 2020. New technologies, which IDC calls "innovation accelerators", will provide almost $7.4 trillion in aggregate industry revenue from 2015-2020, adding $1.8 trillion to the overall size of the industry in terms of annual sales by the end of the forecast period. A large proportion of this spending will come from the fast-growing IOT market, which is forecast to reach almost $1.3 trillion in annual revenue by 2020, of which more than $1 trillion represents new opportunity outside of traditional technology market categories (devices, infrastructure, software, services, and telecom). Robotics, AR/VR, security, cognitive/artificial intelligence, and 3D printing will contribute the rest of this fast-growing portion of the ICT market. The traditional ICT market of data centre infrastructure, client devices, software, services and telecommunications is now growing at a rate not much faster than real GDP and increasingly resembles a mature sector of the overall economy.
* According to IDC, vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 14.9% year-on-year in 1Q17, reaching $8 billion.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.2%
* FTSE100: Down 1.5%
* DAX: Down 3.2%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.2%
* S&P 500: Down 0.6%
* Nasdaq: Down 2%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.5%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.4%
* Shanghai: Up 1.1%

International:
* A possible IPO by Forcepoint, Raytheon's cyber security unit.
* Alibaba buying ZTE's software and cloud unit ZTESoft.

South Africa:
* Further news re Telkom SA's reorganisation.

Fortune magazine has published its latest 'Fortune 500' listing of America's biggest companies. These companies represent two-thirds of the US GDP with $12 trillion in revenue, $890 billion in profit, $19 trillion in market value and employ 28.2 million people worldwide. The list includes private companies and cooperatives that file a 10-K or a comparable financial statement with a government agency. The following technology companies are included in the top 100:

* #3 Apple (same as last year)
* #9 AT&T (was #10)
* #12 Amazon.com (was #18)
* #14 Verizon Communications (was #13)
* #28 Microsoft (was #25)
* #31 Comcast (was #37)
* #32 IBM (was #31)
* #41 Dell Technologies (a new entry that includes the acquisition of EMC that was #113)
* #47 Intel (was #51)
* #59 HPE (a new entry following the HP split)
* #60 Cisco (was #54)
* #61 HP (was #20 before the split)
* #81 Oracle (was #77)
* #96 Charter Communications (was #292 but now includes the acquisition of Time Warner Cable that was #116)
* #98 Facebook (was #157)

Further analysis will follow next week.