Our economy and its industrial base is power intensive and South Africa has one of the highest power consumption-to-unit of gross domestic product ratios anywhere. Cheap and abundant energy has, for a long time, represented our comparative advantages and shaped our economy. It has allowed South Africa to avoid
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From Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy S3 to Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia 920, it’s been a banner year for technology innovation and a real treat for gadget junkies. What, then, were the best tech toys of 2012? I’m fortunate enough in my job to
It’s been nearly two months since Eskom presented its proposed tariff increases to the public as part of its third multi-year price determination (MYPD3) for 2013/14 through to 2017/18. Although there have been some useful inputs from civil society, there has not been any real engagement from
Primedia-owned cinema chain Ster-Kinekor is investing R180m over a 12-month period in decommissioning all of the 35mm film projectors in its movie houses around the country and in replacing them with newfangled digital projectors – and, in some cases, fancy new surround-sound audio systems, too
Social media has evolved at breakneck speed over the past three years, and many marketers are battling to keep up with it. Today, social media isn’t just an experiment, but a fast-maturing sales, marketing and customer support channel. This implies that organisations should no longer imagine that
Last week, my Android-powered smartphone, which had just been upgraded to Jelly Bean, the latest version of the software, popped up a message warning me that it would take nine minutes longer than normal to get to my next meeting, in Midrand. The reason, it said, was that there was a traffic
The introduction by South African mobile operators of next-generation long-term evolution (LTE) networks does not amount to much. But we can’t ignore it because these networks are the first bit of evidence of a future of lost opportunities to deliver cheap, properly fast and ubiquitous broadband
I threw away a pair of Sony headphones a few weeks ago, not out of disgust or carelessness, but because after nearly 15 years of hard service they had finally stopped working. That, in a nutshell, is the Sony story. Since it was founded in 1946 – emerging literally out of the
Most consumers have by now ditched their old-fashioned cathode-ray tube (CRT) TV sets. As the price of liquid crystal display (LCD) sets has plunged, thanks to manufacturing economies of scale, adoption of flat panels has taken off. And the more prices fall, the bigger screen sizes get, to the extent that
Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) and Finland’s Nokia have both taken a beating in recent years. The former’s share price has slumped 89% in the past five years; the latter’s is down by 91%. Yet, in recent weeks, both shares have bounced up significantly, prompting questions about whether