Alibaba reaches for the stars

Last week, the international ICT market was dominated by Alibaba's long-awaited formal filing for an IPO in the US, and Oracle's copyright 'win' over Google regarding Java code used in the Android OS.

At home, it was very quiet, with BTG's investment and the news regarding Alan Knott-Craig being the main stories.

* Good Q3 numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 24.3% and back in the black.
* A positive trading update from ISA Holdings.
* Altron (BTG) made a R669.2 million additional investment of the 27% of its shares held by Kagiso Strategic Investments.
* Mint Electronics, which recently bought a 75% stake in CZ Electronics, will launch its range of locally designed and manufactured smartphones and tablets next month. However, a legal battle may arise following the collapse of the deal between CZ Electronics and Seemahale Telecoms in favour of Mint Electronics.
* Wipro unveiled a new 100-seater learning centre in SA.
* The appointment of Jose dos Santos as CEO of Cell C.
* The resignation of Alan Knott-Craig as CEO of Cell C (stays on as an executive director).

* Mixed year-end figures from Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, with revenue up 8.2% but profit down 14.7%.
* Maroc Telecom acquired Etisalat's West African units, ie, Atlantique Telecom, which has operations in Benin, CAR, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Niger and Togo. The deal was worth $650 million.
* Dimension Data has opened an office in Ghana.
* Telecom Egypt will go ahead with its mobile plans; a move that will necessitate the resolution of the shareholding held in it by Vodafone Egypt.
* The appointments of Darwin Haines as EMEA and Asia VP for Tripp Lite, a power and infrastructure management solutions maker; and Heiko Schlittke as MD of Airtel Malawi.
* The resignation of Saulosi Chilima, MD of Airtel Malawi.

Robert Enslin, a South African, was appointed to the executive board of SAP.

* Blurb, a book-printing service, bought HP's MagCloud, a self-publishing platform for magazines.
* EMC purchased DSSD, a developer of an innovative rack-scale flash storage architecture for I/O-intensive in-memory databases and big data workloads.
* Google acquired Stackdriver, a start-up that is intended to improve the former's cloud computing services.
* GE bought Wurldtech, a Canadian cyber security company.
* Xerox purchased ISG Holdings, a provider of software that reviews medical bills from injured workers for accuracy.
* Hon Hai Precision Industry made a $464.48 million (22%) investment in Asia Pacific Telecom.
* Tencent made a $187.33 million investment in Navinfo, a digital mapping service provider.
* Oracle has won a copyright ruling against Google over Android.
* HP intends to invest over $1 billion in open source cloud computing products and services.
* Excellent quarterly results from Arris (back in the black).
* Very good year-end figures from Softbank.
* Good quarterly numbers from AVG Technologies, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Microchip Technology, Nvidia, Sapient and Zebra Technologies.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Arrow Electronics, Bell Canada, Cablevision Systems (back in the black), Genpact, Sykes Enterprises, Telenor, TeleTech Holdings and Teradata.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Acer (but back in the black), Asustek, CSC, Software AG, Telefonica and Windstream Communications.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AOL, with revenue up but profit down; CenturyLink, with revenue up but profit down; Deutsche Telekom, with revenue up but profit down; DirecTV, with revenue up but profit down; Dish Network, with revenue up but profit down; Electronic Arts, with revenue down but profit up; Nice Systems, with revenue up but profit down; and Symantec, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Alcatel-Lucent, Groupon, Guidance Software, HTC, Interactive Intelligence, Liberty Global (despite revenue being up over 70%), Nuance Communications, Qualys, Quantum, Tableau Software (despite revenue being up over 75%) and US Cellular.
* The appointment of David Aldrich as chairman of Skyworks; and Robert Enslin, a South African, was appointed to the executive board of SAP.
* The retirement of Guy Berruyer, CE of Sage, the UK's largest software group (as of 31 March 2015).
* A planned IPO this year in South Korea from Samsung's SDS unit that provides all the main IT services for Samsung.
* An IPO filing from Alibaba in a deal that is likely to see the value of the company rated at more than $100 billion. The deal could be one of the largest ever and could raise more than $20 billion.
* A satisfactory IPO on NYSE of Cheetah Mobile, the provider of a platform that offers mission-critical applications for its users and global content distribution channels for its business partners.

EMEA/Africa:
* East Africa suffered a 31.6% decline in PC shipments in Q1, according to IDC.
* Zimbabwe has the highest mobile phone adoption in sub-Saharan Africa, with an average 8% annual growth since 2008, according to Gallup. Mauritania, with 96%, has the highest percentage of households with at least one mobile phone, followed by Botswana and Senegal; SA's figure is 70%.

Worldwide:
* The worldwide CRM software market grew 13.7% in 2013 to reach $20.4 billion, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide software market grew 5.5% in 2013 to reach $369 billion, according to IDC.
* The worldwide risk IT and services market will grow to $97.3 billion by 2018, according to IDC.
* Figures indicate that by the end of 2014 there will be almost three billion Internet users, with two-thirds of the figures coming from the developing world, according to the ITU.
* China's software industry grew 20.9% in Q1 to reach $121.69 billion, according to Taiwan's MIIT.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.4%
* S&P 500: Down 0.1%
* FTSE100: Down 0.1%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+8.1%), ISA (+12.7%), MiX Telematics (-8.3%), Morvest Business Group (-11.4%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+12.8%) and Poynting Holdings (-10.2%)

International:
* The $3.2 billion acquisition by Apple of Beats Electronics, a provider of streaming and headphone gear.
* A link-up between Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent.
* The additional $1 billion+ investment in Digital Plus, a pay-TV provider, by Telefonica, which would give it a majority stake.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the local manufacture of cellphones and tablets involving Mint Electronics and CZ Electronics.

Gartner recently published its top 10 strategic technology trends for smart government. They include:
* Personal mobile workplace;
* Mobile citizen engagement;
* Big data and actionable analytics;
* Cost-effective open data;
* Citizen-managed data;
* Hybrid IT and cloud;
* Internet of things;
* Cross-domain interoperability;
* BPM for case management; and
* Gamification for engagement.