This is my 30,000 foot seem at events in the ICT market for February 2014.
A Tiny Background of preceding year’s Februarys…
5 a long time ago in February 2009 the information was ALL about layoffs and financial uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs offered their Alteon asset for considerably less than $18 million, which they experienced purchased for $seven billion 9 a long time earlier! In February 2010 M&A activity was gradual with no massive purchases. Google acquired Aardvark Oracle obtained a few of smaller sized entities IBM bought a little network application business that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase acquired a firm that has a powerful foothold in the fiscal services vertical. There have been tons of indicators that the restoration was underneath way and Canada observed some occupation growth after a time period of decline. February 2011 was another quiet thirty day period for M&A with HP getting Vertica Opentext bought Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace acquired Anso Labs. Planet news was dominated by the well-known uprisings in a increasing amount of nations and the reactions of those governments like the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters. Two several years ago, February 2012 was not a blockbuster month for M&A, but there was some intriguing activity. The biggest offer of the thirty day period observed Oracle shell out $1.9 billion for talent administration business Taleo. Siemens Canada paid $440 million for networking tools business Rugged.com. IBM acquired BYOD firm Worklight Dell bought backup and restoration organization AppAssure Apple bought mobile lookup company Chomp and LM Ericsson acquired Ottawa dependent BelAir Networks. Last yr in February 2013 Dell went private in a $24.four billion offer, that incorporated a $2 billion expense by Microsoft. Oracle paid out $one.7 billion for networking business Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace bought massive knowledge business ObjectRocket Telus was active with two acquisitions, digital medical information division of the Canadian Healthcare Association and digital forensics firm Digital Wyzdom HP also bought the Palm operating program to LG for their smart TVs.
Which provides us back to the current…
February 2014 noticed Fb make a massive move with $16 billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is most likely very good valuation news for Blackberry simply because its BBM solution would be a immediate competitor. Blackberry nonetheless had an additional rough thirty day period when IDC launched its figures as the company’s smartphones accounted for only 1.9% of product sales in Q4 of 2013.
An additional firm with massive news, even though not essentially good was Sony. They show up to be reinventing on their own in their various niches as they are closing their eReader store and divesting on their own of their Laptop division (Vaio).
In other M&A information Comcast is producing a $45 billion play for Time Warner Cable Oracle paid a reputed $400 million for knowledge management system firm Bluekai LinkedIn paid $a hundred and twenty million for on-line task search firm Vibrant and Klout was bought for about $a hundred million by Lithium Systems. Google manufactured a few of acquisitions, on the web fraud business Spider.io and secure logon organization Slicklogin. IBM is acquiring databases as a provider business Cloudant and Monster acquired a pair of businesses, social profile firm Talentbin and work aggregation and distribution technology firm Gozaic.
Other businesses generating news this thirty day period contain Microsoft who declared a new CEO, Satya Nadella (who replaces Steve Ballmer) plus a new Board Chair John Thompson (who replaces Invoice Gates). Dell started its new daily life as a private business with significant restructuring, ensuing in likely 15,000 work losses. On photostick mobile , employment development and infrastructure additions in Canada come in the sort of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.
In reviews from a variety of resources Android has about 80% of the cell OS market place share, with Apple a distant 2nd. Samsung was the dominant handset components supplier with 32% share, with Apple next. Apple nevertheless accounted for approximately 1/three of pill revenue in Western Europe last 12 months, with Samsung next.
A Cisco study implies that consumers will increase cellular data usage by a issue of approximately 8 over the coming 5 many years… so make certain you have very good knowledge plans! The Canadian Federal Federal government declared an infrastructure expense to place broadband into rural communities and Gartner notify us that IT paying was flat calendar year more than 12 months, for the thirteenth yr in a row!
Economic information was normally combined, with no major bad news and no huge breakthroughs. Some job growth in Canada and the US, some positive self-confidence indicators and some not so very good. One particular review seemed to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder found that fifty eight% of employers feel the economic downturn is even now lingering!
That is it for my look at what was taking place in the technology area above the last month, compared to the same month in preceding a long time.
I’ll be again at the stop of March, till then… wander quick and smile!