Baidu taken to task

Alleged copyright violations by Baidu and a handful of acquisitions, including ones by IBM and Verizon, were the main events of a very quiet international ICT market last week.

At home, the numerous announcements made at AfricaCom took up most of the local ICT media space.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Vodacom, with revenue up 6.6% and profit up 8.4%.
* A positive trading update from Telkom SA.
* A mixed trading update from Naspers.
* Negative trading updates from Ansys and TCS.
* Adapt IT acquired Aquilon, a specialist SAP consultancy.
* Teraco will build a third data centre that will be located in Cape Town.
* MTN has selected Etisalat SmartHub to extend its regional network reach.
* A new JSE cautionary by Prescient.
* The appointments of Gary Bullard as CEO of Logicalis (a Datatec subsidiary); Dave Halls as acting MD of Nashua; Yudi Moodley as BlackBerry's MD for sub-Saharan Africa; and Dudu Nyamane as interim chairman of Datacentrix.
* The resignations of Peter Backwell, interim chairman of Datacentrix; David Coutinho, MD of Nashua; and Alpesh Patel, CIO of Barclays Africa.
* The departure of Alexandra Zagury, BlackBerry's MD for sub-Saharan Africa (moving to become MD of UK and Ireland for BlackBerry).

* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Telecom Egypt, with revenue up 16% and profit up 2.3%.
* Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with YooMee Africa (Cameroon) for its LTE roll-out, the 10th contracted LTE deployment the former is currently involved in; seven of which are data-only.
* Econet Solar International, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless, presented its Home Power Stations, designed to harness solar energy in order to provide affordable, clean and safe power to homes in off-grid communities.
* Gilat Satcom presented a new satellite and fibre service to improve speeds and increase capacity within and into Africa.
* Informa Telecoms & Media said while Africa faces demand restraints because of exorbitant smartphones, high retail prices and a lack of investment in connecting certain parts of rural Africa, it is optimistic about the continent's future as a whole.
* Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless, has activated the first fibre-optic link into Somalia.
* SES said Zuku TV, Esat Africa's home entertainment operator, has migrated onto the former's latest satellite that will allow it to expand its capacity and the number of channels it offers.
* Samsung expects to supply half of the smartphones in Africa this year, and still double this number in 2014.
* Solarway presented its new solar-powered kiosks designed to offer a secure solar-powered outlet for telecoms operators or retailers to service customers in off-grid communities.

There was a notable absence of the SABC and the Department of Communications from the [AfricaCom] exhibition.

* Akamai Technologies acquired Velocius Networks, a provider of QOS technology for optimising application traffic across enterprise networks.
* Amphenol bought the Advanced Sensors Business of GE for $318 million.
* Deutsche Telekom purchased GTS Central Europe for EUR546 million.
* EFI acquired Lector Computersysteme, a German print management information system developer.
* The Fintech Group bought a controlling stake in Telecom Argentina that was previously held by Telecom Italia. The deal was worth $960.5 million.
* IBM purchased Fiberlink Communications, a mobile management and security company.
* Mitel Networks acquired Aastra Technologies, an enterprise communications company.
* Verizon Digital Media Services bought upLynk, a technology and television cloud firm.
* Google prevailed over authors in a digital books case.
* A group of Chinese Internet companies, including Sohu and Tencent, are suing Baidu over copyright violations.
* A Chicago computer hacker tied to the group known as Anonymous was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cyber attacks on various government agencies and businesses, including a global intelligence company.
* Excellent quarterly results from Sina.
* Very good quarterly figures from ViaSat (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Applied Materials (back in the black), Tencent and Trend Micro.
* Satisfactory half-year numbers from Vodafone (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Dish Network (back in the black), Hon Hai Precision Industry, Megafon, NetApp and Telus.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Asustek, SFR and Zain.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Cisco, with revenue up but profit down; Rackspace Hosting, with revenue up but profit down; and SingTel, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Cray, Gilat Satellite Networks, Overland Storage and TalkTalk.
* The appointments of Mark Jagiela as CEO of Teradyne; Shaygan Kheradpir as CEO of Juniper Networks; Mark Liu as co-CEO of TSMC; Ernst Jan van Rooijen as interim CEO of Tele2 Netherlands; and CC Wei as co-CEO of TSMC.
* The resignations of Yogesh Malik, CEO of Uninor, Telenor's Indian subsidiary; and Gunther Vogelpoel, CEO of Tele2 Netherlands.
* The retirements of Michael Bradley, CEO of Teradyne; and Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks.
* The dismissal of Didier Bellens, CEO of Belgacom.
* A planned IPO in 2014 from Arista Networks, a rival to Cisco.

International:
* A $2 billion acquisition by Verizon of additional spectrum.
* The future of Snapchat, the 'ephemeral' app famous for its disappearing photos, which has already turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook.

Africa:
* Further solar-powered initiatives for off-grid communities.

South Africa:
* The possible entry of Smile Telecommunications into SA if it can get 800MHz spectrum, which it uses elsewhere in Africa.

* Global smartphone subscriptions will reach 5.6 billion by 2019, of which 930 million will be in Africa, according to Ericsson's Mobility Report. Also, Africa accounted for 20% of all new mobile data subscriptions in Q3.
* Mozambique and Namibia data revenue is expected to surge to total $225 million by 2017, up from $129.4 million in 2012, according to Frost & Sullivan.
* Fifty-five percent of the global mobile phone sales in Q3 were smartphones, with the total mobile phone market up less than 6% to 455.56 million units, according to Gartner. Lenovo moved up to the number three slot, behind Samsung and Apple, displacing LG in the process.
* Android accounted for 81% of all smartphones shipped in Q3, according to IDC.
* Annual SMS revenue will fall to $96.7 billion in 2018, down from $120 billion this year, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.
* Africa has an Internet penetration rate of 16%, half that of Asia-Pacific and less than half the global average of 36%, according to the ITU.
* Sub-Saharan Africa was home to 253 million subscribers by mid-2013, up 18% a year over the past five years, according to the GSMA.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.7%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.7% (highest weekend close since September 2000 and just short of the 4 000 barrier, at 3 986)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.3%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (+13.7%), Ansys (-17.7%), ConvergeNet Holdings (+9.1%), ISA (-8.5%) and Vodacom (+11.4%)

Last week was the occasion of Africa's largest ICT event, ie, AfricaCom, which is held annually in Cape Town and attracts in excess of 8 000 attendees and over 350 exhibitors. The following are some pertinent observations:
* This year's event had substantial broadcasting content for the first time, and the impact and/or presence of so many satellite companies was particularly noticeable.
* There were many new non-Africa-based companies such as Thai Com.
* There was a notable absence of the SABC and the Department of Communications from the exhibition, in addition to some significant operators that have a presence in Africa, such as Airtel and Orange. I would have expected LG Electronics and Samsung to have had some form of a presence, along with more of the traditional IT players, as the conference side of the event has grown strongly in its IT focus.
* It was confirmed that SA is rapidly falling behind the rest of Africa regarding mobile broadband, especially when contrasted to what's happening in places such as Tanzania and Uganda.
* There was heavy confirmation that SA is seen as incredibly expensive regarding call and data services costs, and this is impacting on many new growth initiatives.
* There is a continuing emergence in Africa of several new LTE-only focused players.

One of the most interesting companies present but not exhibiting this year, but assessing the value of doing so in the future, was Thuraya, a mobile satellite communications company based in Dubai. It owns and operates geostationary satellites and provides a range of satellite phone and terminal equipment, including the recently announced SatSleeve that converts an iPhone into a satellite smartphone.

Thuraya is helping in the Philippines following the country's recent disaster.