The mobile operators are fighting the wrong war, and they’re squaring up to the wrong enemy. They should be fundamentally revising their business models to prepare for Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which are taking aim directly at their voice business. Let us take a step back. For well over a decade, South
Google recently grabbed headlines with its US$3,2bn acquisition of home automation company Nest Labs. The deal is the second biggest in Google’s history, after the $12,5bn it splashed out for Motorola Mobility in August 2011. But why did it buy it? Nest Labs designs and manufactures Wi-Fi-enabled
All is not well in technology land. The normally ebullient mood at the annual SxSW Interactive conference is darker this year, weighed down by concerns about the prying eyes of governments. A keynote address by WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange over the weekend captured this growing unease. Speaking to a
Microsoft is at a crossroads. Its new CEO, Satya Nadella – only the third person to lead the company in its 39-year history, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer – has to decide if the software maker’s future lies exclusively in the business market, where it remains
This week’s blistering attack on Google by 24.com, the Cape Town-based digital publishing arm of JSE-listed media and technology giant Naspers, in which it accused the US company of dodging taxes in South Africa, is just the latest such attack by a Naspers company. In 2011, Brazilian
A unit of media giant Naspers has launched an extraordinary and blistering attack on Google, accusing the US Internet giant of not paying its fair share of taxes in South Africa. It says Google is making it hard for local digital publishers to compete because it transacts through an offshore entity
There’s an online land grab of the sort not seen since the dot-com bubble taking place in the global instant messaging (IM) market. WhatsApp Messenger, WeChat (partly owned by South Africa’s Naspers), Hangouts, Skype and BlackBerry Messenger, along with several smaller
The year has not started well for advocates of net neutrality, the idea that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, without discrimination. A US federal court struck down a key part of the Open Internet Order, a set of Federal Communications Commission regulations
Last year proved to be a little quiet on the technology front. Internationally, there were few major developments, at least in consumer electronics. Manufacturers continued to refine their televisions, smartphones, notebooks and tablets rather than cracking
Microsoft South Africa MD Mteto Nyati and former Google sub-Saharan Africa boss Stafford Masie have been appointed to the board of JSE-listed education and recruitment company AdvTech. Nyati, who previously worked at IBM South Africa, and Masie, who is spearheading
