Online & Mobile transaction volume saw a one percent uptick on a quarterly basis, from 840 to 848. Deal value declined 12 percent, from $86.9 billion to $76.4 billion. Of note, nine of the industry’s top ten largest deals in Q1 2022 were completed by strategic acquirers.

The number of deals in the industry’s mobile application sector rose 11 percent over Q4 2021. The largest mobile application transaction in Q1 2022 was ShareChat’s announced acquisition of MX TakaTak, a short-video platform, for $700 million.

Deal flow in the E-Marketing & Search segment increased 18 percent over the past quarter. Meanwhile, M&A activity in the Communications segment rose 13 percent.

Transaction volume in the SaaS & Cloud segment decreased seven percent during the quarter. Notable segment deals year-to-date in specific vertical markets included Partners Group’s announced acquisition of Forterro, a provider of ERP software and services for small and mid-sized businesses primarily in the manufacturing space, for $1.1 billion; and digital personal finance company SoFi’s announced acquisition of Technisys, a cloud-native, digital multi-product core banking platform, also for $1.1 billion.

Regarding active SaaS & Cloud subsectors, cybersecurity related M&A volume increased 65 percent over Q4 2022, from 17 to 28 deals. Notable high profile acquirers in Q1 2022 included Google with the announced acquisition of Mandiant for $4.8 billion; CloudFlare with the acquisition of Area 1 Security for $162 million; and Darktrace with the acquisition of Cybersprint for $54 million.

As for the industry‘s remaining segments, E-Commerce volume remained nearly constant and E-Content volume decreased six percent.