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
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Imagine your phone popping up an alert whenever your blood pressure is elevated, or if your blood-glucose level is problematic. Imagine receiving a warning about an impending major health issue like a heart attack and being told to get
“There is no confusion in the ANC.” Those are the words telecommunications and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele used in parliament this week to deflect criticism that President Jacob Zuma’s post-election decision to
Samsung warned this week that its earnings in its most recent financial quarter were likely to have tumbled by as much as 26,5% – the third straight quarter of decline – in part because of a glut of unsold smartphones and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers. These must be troubling times for the
South Africans love to complain about Telkom. It’s been a national pastime for years. The customer service problems associated with the fixed-line operator are the stuff of legend – and nightmare. So, when Telkom’s CEO, Sipho Maseko, steps up to the plate and promises to fix these deep-seated
South Africa’s cellular operators have been trying for years to crack the mobile commerce code, but haven’t been able to repeat the successes they’ve had in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. MTN, working with Pick n Pay, may just have found the key to success at
It’s been more than six weeks since the election and nearly a month since President Jacob Zuma stunned the information and communications technology industry by dumping his hardworking communications minister, Yunus Carrim, and splitting the communications portfolio in two. Since then, there has been
Telkom’s share price has risen sharply in the past year on optimism that the new leadership team under CEO Sipho Maseko has what it takes to turn the lumbering telecommunications giant around. Since last June, the share price has gained more than 150%. And since its low point in May last year, it has
In the mid-1990s, there were fewer telephone connections in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa than there were in Manhattan. What a difference two decades has made: by the end of this year, there will be more than 635m active telephone subscriptions on the sub-continent. That number is twice the population of
What was the president thinking? Last Sunday, Jacob Zuma sent shockwaves through South Africa’s technology industry by dumping his hardworking communications minister, Yunus Carrim – arguably the most competent person to fill the portfolio since the 1990s – and splitting the ministry in