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IT Industry News
At first, April 2015 seems like a month where not too much happened, but when we look at the facts, there was plenty of action! Nokia was the biggest story, paying $16.5 billion for telecom company Alcatel-Lucent, but there was also a $4 billion deal that saw Capgemini buy services firm IGATE and LinkedIn made its largest acquisition ever, paying $1.5 billion for training portal Lynda.com. LinkedIn also bought a predictive insights startup company, Refresh. Netsuite paid $200 million for ERP and commerce software company Bronto Software and Blackberry reputedly shelled out $150 million for file sharing security company Watchdox. Salesforce was also out shopping, picking up mobile two-factor authentication startup, Toopher. In another deal involving billions, Informatica decided to follow in DELL's footsteps and go private for a $5.3 billion price tag.
There were a few studies out giving some mixed messages: worldwide sales of PCs declined but not as much as expected; the Canadian Internet of Things market is projected to grow from $2.9 billion in 2013 to $6.5 billion in 2018; Samsung shipped the most smartphones last quarter; and, global IT spending is expected to be hit by the strong US dollar to the tune of $48 billion in 2015.
The economic indicators this month were not as strong as we have seen previously, with confidence in both the Canadian and US markets dampened. The US did have decent growth in jobs, just not as much as in previous months and Canada was essentially static remaining at a 6.8% unemployment rate. Some indicators suggest a slowdown in the US, but others think it is just a short-term impact due to bad weather and port closings. With most indicators up, employment up and the dollar strong, it seems as though the US is going to be just fine. Canada is still feeling the effects of the hit to the oil patch but other sectors are still performing strongly. Given everything that we are seeing, the indicators should be looking better next month.
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