by arthur goldstuck • Tags • Page 4 of 5 •

Media Future: Gadget war moves into the lounge

Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Sony, LG and Samsung all stole the show at the International CES last week with TV sets that, once again, raised the stakes in both technology and marketing.

The war for domination of consumer electronics has shifted from the handheld portable gadget to a device that is firmly ensconced in the living room.

At last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the launchpad for the industry that owns Las Vegas in January every year, smartphones took a backseat. One dazzling TV set after another was unveiled to oohs and aahs – and aarghs from those who had just bought the previous state of the art version.

There was little to choose between the flagship screens of the world’s TV giants, with the big three, Samsung, LG and Sony, all unveiling versions of the new Ultra High-definition (UHD) 4K standard – sets with double the resolution of High-definition TV.

Sony stole a march on its rivals, however, with the world’s first 4K TV using OLED (Organic Light-emitting Diode). Samsung, for its part, put out a 3D OLED TV.

Best of 2012: Best Phones of 2012

Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) declares his choice for the Best Phones of 2012.

Our Phone of the Year divided into high-end smartphones, mid-level and low-end smartphones, and feature phones. The list breaks away from the traditional top 3 approaches, as a wide variety of devices have emerged to suit different needs.

Best of 2012: Most Useful Business Gadget of 2012

Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) picks devices that can save your social, business and career life.

What defines a great gadget? Arguably, it can be captured in a single word: desire. The high end of smartphone, tablet and laptop ranges depend heavily on this basic concept for their market share.

But then there are the rest of the gadgets, as well as the rest of the market, where both consumer and business users are looking not only for the best value for money, but also the highest utility.

One way to sum it up is: can this gadget save your life? And here we’re talking about social life, business survival and career success.

Best of 2012: Tablet of the Year

Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) picks the best tablet computers of 2012.

The best tablet on the market is not always the best value for money on the market.

While most major technology manufacturers make tablets, not all are able to bring them to market at prices that makes sense. As a result, no-name brands compete alongside the biggest names in the business. They can’t match the quality of the big guys, but their prices are often unbeatable.

The choice for the best tablets of the year takes both of these factors into account.

The tablet ranking is divided into 10” devices or thereabouts, those with screens smaller than 9”, and then the overall choice of Tablet of the Year.

Brand Insight: Nokia makes its move

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) The launch of Nokia’s flagship Lumia 920 phone in South Africa was big news, but equally important is the move it is making across all market segments..

In a few short years, the brand disintegrated from global market leader to troubled poor relation of the mobile world. Nokia, along with another faded brand, Motorola, almost invented the mobile phone market as we know it today. Along with fellow poor relations BlackBerry, it also helped to define the smartphone market. But all these brands were left in the dust of the touch screen revolution sparked by the iPhone and now led by Samsung.

In South Africa and across Africa, Nokia maintained its leadership through its wide range of basic phones appealing to the lower end of the market. In mid-2012, according to World Wide Worx’s Mobility 2012 research project, Nokia still had 50% of the cellphone market in South Africa, but buying intentions showed that it would drop well below that mark in the next 18 months.

The question on the lips of all market watchers has been, how will Nokia reverse this trend? Can it maintain its leadership in Africa and, by extension, secure its survival globally? And can it compete at the top end of the market, where it has almost lost its presence?

Online Video: the experience is here

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) A powerful clue has emerged that South Africans are finally beginning to get affordable broadband: one of the three most popular international web sites in this country is YouTube – beaten only by Google and Facebook in amount of traffic from South Africa. YouTube also happens to be the third most visited site among Internet users globally.

That highlights another trend that is so significant, it is an information revolution in itself: video has become one of the most popular forms of accessing information online. The trend has enormous implications for education, health, business and even politics.

Real estate agents are using video to showcase properties, the tourism industry is using it to offer virtual tours of prospective accommodation establishments, schools and universities are using it to share the lectures and courses of some of the world’s great teachers, and business are using it for training and communications.

Apple and Microsoft reveal their new strategic thinking

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Last Thursday, the world changed – once again.

Microsoft’s launch of Windows 8 was the obvious, expected and long-planned main event. Not quite as expected or planned, Microsoft’s nemesis, Apple, announced its first disappointing financial results in many years.

The irony of this turning of the tables was that, just two days earlier, Apple had made its own biggest product announcement in its history. It had launched the new iPad mini 7.9” tablet, along with a fourth generation iPad, and new versions of its iconic iMac computer, MacBook Pro laptop and Mac mini computer.

Such an extensive upgrade of its range, the launch of a new format and the arrival of the iPad 4 barely six months after the previous version, represented a show of force by Apple. Coming – not coincidentally – two days before the launch of Windows 8, it sent a message that Apple was able to go large any time it wanted, and that it had not lost its touch for producing deeply desirable products.

At the same time, however, it revealed chinks in its armour. Crucially, the new 7.9” iPad mini represented the first major new product from Apple in more than a decade that did not lead the market. It was a response to the massive inroads made into its tablet market share by 7” tablets, in particular Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

In the undeclared war between printed and digital media, there are many dates that will live on in infamy

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) In the undeclared war between printed and digital media, there are many dates that will live on in infamy.

28 October 2008: The Christian Science Monitor closes its daily print edition.

13 March 2012: The end of the Encylopaedia Britannica as a set of printed volumes.

And 18 October 2012: Newsweek announces it will cease publication of its weekly magazine, and become a digital-only publication.

The announcement last Thursday sent shock waves through the print media industry, representing a capitulation to the inexorable rise of digital media. Newsweek said it would lay off a portion of its staff, and those who remain will produce a paid-for online magazine called Newsweek Global. It will continue to exist alongside Newsweek’s online sister publication, the startlingly inappropriately titled The Daily Beast.

In an interview with the New York Times, editor-in-chief Tina Brown confessed: “You cannot actually change an era of enormous disruptive innovation. No one single person can reverse that trend. You can’t turn back what is an inexorable trend.”

Why Knott-Craig Jr left Mxit

Mxit has announced the immediate departure of CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jr, and a “R100-million investment”. Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) unravels the shock move.

Alan Knott-Craig Jnr has stepped down as CEO of Mxit, barely a year after he bought it through his investment company, World of Avatar (WoA). He is also departing WoA.

“While the shareholders and I share the same vision, we differ on how to get there. Therefore, I agreed to go my own way. I wish them all the best for the future. Mxit is Africa’s biggest tech success story, and can be a global success story,” said Knott-Craig Jnr in a statement issued yesterday afternoon. The statement added that he would not be drawn further on the issue, suggesting that the terms of his departure include a confidentiality clause.

His departure comes as a shock, as he was seen as being heavily invested on an emotional level in the future of Mxit and social networking in Africa – as evidenced by his book Mobinomics, jointly authored with Gus Silber.

Social secrets of the digital divide

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Our society is held back by many digital divides. Those who have computers and those who don’t. Those who have Internet access and those who don’t. Those who create mobile apps in their spare time and those who are over 21.

Seriously, though, the digital divide is real, it’s a drag on the economy, and it exacerbates the gap between the haves and have-nots.

The one digital divide that has been crossed, however, is the gap between those who could afford a communications device called a phone, and those who could not. Today, 80% of South Africans have a phone. That’s the good news. The better news is that, as the average phone becomes more advanced, it becomes a tool to help users cross several other digital divides.

The findings of the South African Social Media Landscape 2012 study, released by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, reveals startling secrets of social South Africa.

The key findings of the research were that, at the end of August, 5.33-million South Africans were using Facebook on the Web, 4,6-million were on WhatsApp ,2,43-million on Twitter, 1,9-million on LinkedIn. A huge 9,35-million were active on Mxit.

Because Facebook does not measure mobile-only usage among those who have registered via their cellphones, however, the full extent of its penetration is significantly understated: primary research by World Wide Worx shows that 6.8-million people were accessing Facebook on their phones in mid-2012.