It emerged this week, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, that Snapchat, a Californian start-up that develops a smartphone app of the same name popular among teens, recently spurned a US$3bn-plus all-cash offer from Facebook to buy it out. The offer value was at least three times the already
Communications minister Yunus Carrim demonstrated in parliament this week that government may finally be dealing decisively with the impasse over digital terrestrial television that is undermining efforts to get more South Africans connected to broadband. Carrim’s remarks to
Sipho Maseko is a really nice guy – which makes me want to pity him over the challenge he’s taken on at Telkom. Some would say accepting the group CEO position at South Africa’s biggest fixed-line operator is like grabbing a tiger by its tail. Sooner rather than later, you get eaten
There was a time, oh, 10 years ago, when consumers used to salivate at the prospect of a new handset from Nokia. From the 2004’s computer-cum-phone, the 9500 Communicator, to 2007’s multimedia powerhouse, the N95, it used to be that for many people that the only option when it came to upgrading
With the release of Windows 8.1 this week, Microsoft did an about-turn and brought back the Windows “Start” button, found on Windows computers for 17 years until the company killed it off in 2012 in Windows 8. The Start button has a storied history, having first appeared
This may go down as the week that changed everything in South Africa’s telecommunications industry, the one that signalled the start of the end of the duopoly grip held by Vodacom and MTN. It started nine days ago when sector regulator, the Independent Communications
So, Vodacom is in exclusive talks to buy Neotel. There’s no surprise there – that Neotel is for sale is one of the telecommunications industry’s worst-kept secrets. But if the deal goes ahead, which is far from certain, it could spark further, arguably much-needed consolidation in the sector
Watching BlackBerry over the past few years has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The company, whose name was once synonymous with smartphones, has stumbled from one disaster to another. This week, things got a lot worse. BlackBerry
Naspers is within a whisker of smashing through R1 000/share for the first time and reaching a market capitalisation of R400bn thanks to an 80%-plus surge in its share price in the past 12 months. The growth in its value in recent years has been nothing short of
The smartphone market could be reaching another tipping point. Several developments in recent weeks point to potentially big shifts in the fortunes of the major players. Let’s start with Apple, which on Tuesday took the wraps off not one but two new iPhones, a top-end model, the 5s, and, perhaps more significantly, a
