Samsung’s new top-end smartphone, the Android-powered Galaxy S4, has set the benchmark that other manufacturers, especially Asian rivals such as Sony, HTC and Huawei, are going to have to beat in 2013. The S4, launched at a no-expense-spared event in New York two weeks ago, packs the sort of technology into its
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News last week that the Competition Commission is in early-stage talks with Telkom with a view to possibly reaching a settlement ahead of the tribunal hearings should be welcomed if the outcome benefits consumers. The tribunal hearings relate to a broad complaint brought by industry players against
The share price of BlackBerry, the long-suffering smartphone manufacturer until recently known as Research in Motion, leapt higher on Monday on renewed speculation that China’s biggest PC maker, Lenovo, could make a play for the company. BlackBerry’s share price shot
Ladies and gentleman, we have a price war. South Africa’s mobile operators are competing more aggressively with one another on price than at any other time in the industry’s 20-year history. Prepaid rates, in particular, have tumbled. And, whatever telecommunications industry bosses argue
When major corporate brands start bashing each other over the head in public, you know that commercial rivalry between them has reached an intense level. This is exactly what’s happening in South Africa’s mobile industry, where Vodacom, MTN and Cell C have taken to sniping at each other at every
Fans of the open-source Firefox Web browser, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, have long enjoyed the “Easter egg” in the software that takes a dig at Microsof t and its browser, Internet Explorer (IE). Typing in “about:mozilla” in the address bar has always brought up some clever
Weekend newspaper reports suggest that President Jacob Zuma is poised to axe his scandal-plagued communications minister, Dina Pule. If so, she’ll be the third communications minister in as many years to be moved out of the crucial portfolio, after Siphiwe Nyanda and Roy Padayachie
Cell C chief commercial officer Jose Dos Santos expressed frustration at a media conference on Monday that the operator, South Africa’s third-largest by subscriber numbers after Vodacom and MTN, is not allowed to engage in direct comparative advertising. Dos Santos said the
Bigger is better. That was the message from smartphone manufacturers at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January. It is a trend that will no doubt be on display again in late February at Mobile World Congress, the industry’s biggest annual trade event, held each year in Barcelona. Growing
A hundred years after being popularised, the humble wristwatch is being reinvented for the smartphone era. Several exciting initiatives, including Pebble, a crowd-funded project that has raised more than US$10m, are set to emerge this year. Imagine lounging on