Browsing: Opinion

The years of delays in South Africa’s migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television, caused mainly by political bungling, are starting to have a direct economic impact. South Africa was originally meant to have completed migration from analogue to digital signals in November 2011. Eighteen months later and it’s still not clear

The Press Council has said it is unable to consider a complaint by communications minister Dina Pula’s spokesman, former journalist Wisani Ngobeni, against Sunday Times editor Phylicia Oppelt. Its reasons are intriguing, and worth closer scrutiny, particularly when one keeps in mind the claim that the self-regulatory

Those critical of Apple suggest iOS, its operating system for the iPhone and the iPad, has fallen behind Google’s Android and even Microsoft’s Windows Phone. I’m inclined to agree — and I’m an iPhone user. Though much of the speculation around the upcoming iOS 7 has dealt

Is it 1999 again? The heady days of the dot-com boom are long past and yet Yahoo’s sudden binge of acquisitions – some of them of dubious value – betray the same irrational exuberance and hope. This year so far, Yahoo has snapped up 10 companies. This is not that

Just as the music industry was getting used to the idea of another shift in formats – from compact discs as the distribution mechanism to digital downloads over the Internet – another huge change in the way people listen to music looks set to shake the business to its foundations. A decade after Steve Jobs

Few people remember third place. Whether in sport, science or business, there’s little glory attached to the bronze medal. But two multinational giants, BlackBerry and Microsoft, are straining to be the third player in the burgeoning smart phone market. The latest figures from

It has an arcane name and involves complex communications technology, but there’s every reason you and I should be getting very excited indeed about “television white spaces”, the gaps in spectrum between broadcast television channels. Google and Microsoft are pouring millions of dollars

“It’s all about the ecosystem.” That’s a catchphrase much bandied about these days. For mobile device manufacturers, having a range of quality software is as important as the hardware. Perhaps even more important. Two companies, Finland’s Nokia and Canada’s

Universal access to the Internet in South Africa is no longer being held back by high prices or a lack of education, but by government and regulatory inefficiency. Smartphones and mobile computing devices are getting cheaper and broadband far more affordable. But the spectrum needed to deliver high-speed bandwidth is still clogged

A piece on US technology website ZDNet earlier this month, written by columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols, suggested that Windows 8 represents Microsoft’s “New Coke moment”. Others quickly jumped on the idea. The Financial Times led with a story on the subject, saying the fact that Microsoft