Author: Duncan McLeod

In the escalating smartphone wars, the battle for supremacy is being waged between Apple and Samsung Electronics. In the first quarter of 2012, it’s estimated the two companies consumed all of the industry’s profits and 74% of its revenues. Where does this leave BlackBerry’s Research in Motion, Nokia

Cellular operator Cell C may retrench as much as 12% of its workforce as it seeks to eliminate “overstaffing”, TechCentral has established. The company informed its employees this week that a “process of consultation” with them was being started to “streamline the business”. It’s understood that Cell C’s networking

The SA Communications Forum (SACF), an industry grouping that includes the SABC and the country’s biggest telecommunications operators, plans to lobby the department of communications to include a “return path” in the subsidised set-top boxes that the country’s poorer consumers will purchase when

The Flame malware that infected computers across the Middle East and North Africa is a “cyber weapon”, probably developed by a nation state for the purpose of espionage. This is the view of Vitaly Kamluk, chief malware expert at Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, the antivirus company that played an instrumental

A date has been set for the court showdown between JSE-listed Reunert and John Holdsworth and his new company, mobile virtual network operator AppChat. However, the matter will only be heard in early August, more than two months after the parties had expected they would square off in front of a

When people are asked to think of a hybrid vehicle, the first name that invariably pops into their heads is Toyota’s iconic Prius. But the Japanese carmaker is intent on making full hybrids — cars that can run solely on a battery-powered motor or a petrol engine or a combination of both — available across its range

Seacom plans to upgrade its subsea telecommunications network to newer fibre-optic switching technology later this year that will more than double the capacity on the system. CEO Mark Simpson says the company will begin tests in the next couple of months with a view to upgrading the US$600m system from

It’s not yet known how Hewlett-Packard’s plan to shed 27 000 jobs in the next two and a half years will affect the company’s SA subsidiary. The IT giant said on Wednesday that it plans to shed the jobs, or about 8% of its worldwide workforce of nearly 350 000 people, by the end of its 2014 financial year

Extraordinary events took place behind the scenes in SA’s cellphone industry in the past week. Alan Knott-Craig played his first hand as Cell C CEO, slashing prepaid voice prices, and Vodacom reacted almost immediately with new rates of its own. But then the bigger operator botched its counter attack by

When Samsung sent us its Series 7 Slate tablet PC to review a couple of weeks ago, we couldn’t resist the temptation to ditch Windows 7 from its 128GB solid-state drive and install the consumer preview of Windows 8. After all, Windows 8 is designed from the ground up as a tablet-friendly operating system