Duncan McLeod is founder and managing editor of TechCentral. With more than 30 years of experience in technology journalism, he has worked for and contributed to a range of publications, including the Financial Mail, the Sunday Times and the Financial Times.
Walk into a mobile retailer today and you’ll be greeted by a wall of phones, many of them black, almost all of them drab slabs of plastic with large touch screens. Before Steve Jobs got onto a stage in San Francisco seven years ago and unveiled Apple’s first iPhone, cellphones came in all sorts of nifty shapes. There were candy bars, sliders
It’s been a busy news week on the technology front. Your hosts Duncan McLeod and Regardt van der Berg tackle some of the bigger developments in this week’s episode of TalkCentral. Items on the agenda this week include Vodacom’s relaunch of
Telecommunications and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele has missed a self-imposed deadline to publish government’s final policy on digital terrestrial television migration. Cwele said in parliament in mid-July that he would publish the final policy within two weeks. There is no reference to the digital TV policy in this week’s
MTN may be in talks to buy a stake in giant Indian telecommunications operator Tata Teleservices and its associated business Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra). The Hindustan Times quotes unnamed sources with knowledge of the discussions as confirming talks are underway. “It is too early to comment on the level of discussions
Ahmad Farroukh has replaced MTN South Africa CEO Zunaid Bulbulia with immediate effect. Bulbulia has been named chief operating officer of the MTN group, which is the role that Farroukh has filled until now
Will it be a case of second time lucky for Vodacom? The mobile operator has finally relaunched M-Pesa, the mobile payments platform that has proved enormously successful in Kenya and Tanzania, in South Africa, hoping it will
First National Bank is poised to become the first South African financial services institution to launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The bank is at an advanced stage of discussions with Cell C to launch the MVNO, two independent sources with knowledge of the plans have told TechCentral. The news comes just a day after
Vinny Lingham, the South African entrepreneur behind online gift card service Gyft, has hit pay dirt. Lingham has agreed to sell the company, which is based in San Francisco, to First Data, a big player in the payment technology space, for a rumoured figure of more than US$54m
JSE-listed retail group Mr Price has become the first South African retailer to launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), TechCentral can reveal. It’s only the second company in the country to launch an MVNO after Virgin Mobile. Mr Price says it’s not keen to talk yet about its strategy behind its MVNO, called MRP Mobile
Facebook’s Instagram has launched a new one-to-one visual messaging application for iOS and Android called Bolt – and it’s launched the product first in South Africa, New Zealand and Singapore. The Bolt app, which appears to be a response to the wildly popular Snapchat, lets users “capture and send photos and videos to friends with just
