When it comes to the latest handsets, consumers want to know more about the software they’re buying than the hardware specifications of the phone itself. This is driving big competitive changes in the smartphone market and reshaping an industry. A few years ago, buying a cellphone was a relatively trivial exercise.
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Telkom nonexecutive chairman Jeff Molobela, under fire for allegedly overstepping his mandate and interfering in the day-to-day operations of the group, has hit back at his critics, saying he’s been unfairly maligned. Molobela used a press conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday to slam “innuendo from a number of quarters” and refute claims that he “recklessly ignored corporate governance”.
Outgoing Telkom chief financial officer Peter Nelson has sold nearly R1,8m worth of the group’s shares in the open market just days after he announced he would be stepping down from the telecommunications group. Telkom informed the market late on Tuesday that Nelson sold 53 421 ordinary shares last Friday, 23 July, a week after he surprised shareholders by announcing he would step down.
Super 5 Media, once one of SA’s most promising new pay-TV operators, is coming apart at the seams. TechCentral can reveal exclusively that management has gone to ground amid signs the company, once regarded as the strongest potential competitor to incumbent MultiChoice and its DStv service, is collapsing.
One of the country’s leading business intelligence software companies, Harvey Jones, has been forced into a dramatic restructuring after its UK parent, London-listed Avisen, refocused its business. It’s understood that Harvey Jones, which had employed about 30 people, has been forced to reduce its headcount dramatically. Now MD Keith Jones is leading a management buyout of the local company but he says he is unable to comment until the deal is wrapped up, probably sometime next week.
Pay-TV incumbent MultiChoice will unveil a streaming mobile television offering at R59/month on 1 August. DStv Mobile communications manager Maiyo Simapungula says the service is already available in a soft-launch phase. The service is not technically a broadcast, but rather is streamed over 3G compatible handsets using Vodafone Live, Vodacom’s content platform.
Durban-based software developer and occasional TechCentral columnist Greg Mahlknecht has built a free map showing the world’s submarine telecommunications cable systems. The map, which took Mahlknecht several months to complete, is free of charge and will remain so. It’s available at cablemap.info.
Technology billionaire Mark Shuttleworth has slammed government’s failure to fix problems at the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), warning ongoing capacity problems at the regulator are hampering economic growth. Shuttleworth, speaking to TechCentral following Icasa’s decision last week to postpone an auction of valuable radio frequency spectrum, says there is no “clear prioritisation of telecommunications as a vital source of growth in the SA economy”.
Moments after we finished recording this week’s episode of the TalkCentral podcast, in which we speculated about the likely fate of communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala, the news came in that minister Siphiwe Nyanda had fired her. Fortunately — or, perhaps, unfortunately? — we weren’t too far off the mark in our pre-announcement speculation.
Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda has fired his director-general, Mamodupi Mohlala, saying that trust between the two had “broken down irretrievably”. “In the interests of the department, the staff and the government, the minister has come to the conclusion that it would be best to release Mohlala from her position as director-general with effect from 23 July 2010,” Nyanda’s spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso said in a terse statement issued on Friday evening.