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
Author: Alistair Fairweather
If I told you online shopping is the next big thing to hit South Africa, you might think I was living in 1995. So-called experts will tell you big brands like Amazon and Kalahari have the market sewn up. They have the scale, the supply chains and the deep pockets to dominate the market completely
Rumours are circulating that Apple may abandon Intel chips in favour of those designed by ARM Holdings. Bloomberg reported on 6 November that “people familiar with the company’s research” had said Apple was “exploring” the idea. Of course these sources
The year 1975 was a bumper one for the personal computer. Nearly 50 000 of them were sold, hatching an entirely new market. Just a year or two earlier, only giant corporations could afford computers. Jump forward to 2012: between July and September 87m new PCs were shipped and more than
When Stephen Elop took over at Nokia, he likened the company’s predicament to a man standing on a burning oil rig, debating whether to brave the cold sea or the flames. Nokia has since dived headlong into change – and is yet to surface. Microsoft, the company Elop left to join Nokia, is now toying with a similar plunge into
The iPhone 5 is a huge disappointment, without any of the delightful innovations that characterised the launches of its older siblings. The Phone 5 is a huge success, selling faster than any of the models that came before it. These are the messages competing for dominance in the tech and business press. But which
Jeff Bezos isn’t easily satisfied. He’s the 26th richest person on the planet, and he’s been a (self-made) billionaire for nearly two decades. And yet the 48-year-old founder of Amazon.com continues to push his company, and himself, into new territory. When Amazon launched the Kindle e-reader in late
Touch-screen smartphones, once an expensive rarity, now generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue every year. And Apple, a pioneer in this market, is bent on ensuring its rivals don’t profit from its original ideas. Apple’s first big case has just born
A year ago, the tech press was all aflutter about the possibility of a new bubble in the internet industry. The blogosphere hummed with dire predictions of “dot-bomb 2.0” and equally passionate rebuttals. It’s amazing how much can change in a year. The most
Remember five or six years ago when everyone thought they could start their own social network? Then Facebook arrived and effectively crushed everyone else in the market. There was no point anymore — it owned the market. But while the bean