If you launched a brand new product just before Christmas and then sold around 700 000 units, you’d be pretty pleased. But if your company was Microsoft, and the product was the Surface tablet, those numbers would look a bit pitiful. But wait a minute
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
Two major factors have worked against Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) in the past two years: companies are no longer buying the majority of smartphones sold today, and individuals overwhelmingly choose devices other than BlackBerrys when they make buying decisions. Both of these have
There’s no denying that cutting the cost to communicate is good for South Africa. Cheaper and more ubiquitous communications have a direct and measurable economic impact. This is one of the reasons government wants to have every South African online by the end of the decade. Part of government’s
When was the last time you heard people, young or old, arguing the merits of different rock bands? I’m guessing it’s been a while. But what about a tiff about their choice of mobile phone? In the last five years, I’ve heard too many to count. Does that make personal technology the rock ‘n roll of this century? The
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
Communications department director-general Rosey Sekese has been placed on “special leave” by minister Dina Pule, apparently after having misled parliament’s portfolio committee on communications about her performance contract on two separate occasions last year. While there has been
What if I told you that modern life as we know it relies on a vast army of thinking machines? There are at least 50m of them on the planet, yet relatively few people would recognise one in a picture. I’m talking about servers – the powerful computers that underpin the Internet, accelerate scientific research
South Africa’s seemingly neverending migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television has been so beset by problems for so long that it would be almost comical if the repercussions for the country’s economy weren’t so serious. It’s been more than a year since South Africa
While titans like Apple, Microsoft and Google are grappling for global dominance, ordinary people around the world have begun tinkering with gadgets again. Just look at the Raspberry Pi. It’s barely bigger than a credit card and costs less than R250, but the Pi is a fully fledged computer. Hook it up to your TV and a
