What’s up with… the cloud, Vodafone, Singtel

• Cloud infrastructure services in high demand
• Vodafone disposes of its Ghana asset
• Singtel continues with its Innov8 venture

Canalys has reported that cloud infrastructure services were in high demand in the second quarter as worldwide spending saw a 33% year-on-year increase to US$62.3bn. The pertinent point is that there is no such thing as a killer cloud app but there are a host of slightly homicidal ones, which accounts for the huge range and number of drivers behind the expansion of cloud infrastructure services. Canalys box-ticks data analytics and machine learning, datacentre consolidation, application migration, cloud-native development and service delivery, along with continued growth in industry-specific cloud applications. The big three cloud players – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud – are as dominant as ever, accounting for 63% of the infrastructure spend and growing at a collective 42% – quite a bit more than that one-third spending increase. This implies the behemoths are tightening their grip. Canalys has a huge collection of facts, figures and trends on cloud and its infrastructure – available here.

Vodafone has agreed a sale of its stake in Vodafone Ghana to Telecel which, according to Bloomberg, is planning to sell off its tower assets to fund the acquisition. Vodafone bought its 70% stake in the network from the Ghana government for $900m way back in 2008. Telecel has other telecoms interests in Africa while Vodafone Ghana is thought to have around 9.3 million mobile voice subscribers. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Singtel is poised to invest a further $100m into Singtel Innov8, its corporate venture arm, bringing the total to $350m. The latest capital infusion is to be put to work in identifying and growing innovative startups, which focus on areas that mesh with Singtel’s direction and requirements, according to the company. So far Innov8 has invested in more than 95 startups since it was established in 2020, four of which - Arista, Ruckus, Jasper and Shape - turned out to be unicorns (achieving valuations of more than $1bn) – find out more about Innov8.

Juniper Research has projected that the total number of digital wallet users globally will exceed 5.2 billion in 2026, up from 3.4 billion in 2022 – a 53% increase. The researchers predict that a big impact will be made by ‘superapps’, which are designed to drive digital wallet use in developing countries that are currently considered ‘cash heavy’, that is they are still using cash at well above the average global rate. Juniper says superapps are multipurpose apps able to integrate digital payments alongside other services, including wealth management and eCommerce – see Juniper’s new report called Digital Wallets: Market Forecasts, Key Opportunities and Vendor Analysis 2022-2026, and a free white paper here.

- The staff, TelecomTV