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Media Future: Nokia’s back in town

by Arthur Goldstuck. The phone brand is back, and hoping the good memories will restore a proud name.

Design Annotator: Young South Africa, motion photography and Show & Tell #2

by Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal) For Design Annotator today, we’ve chosen: Young South Africa featuring Sibs Shongwe-La Mer; Bizarre AfrikaBurn motion photos by Lukas Renlund; Show & Tell creative talks; 10 creatives inspired by the city; Jo Anke Gallery’s Hlengiwe Vilakati; illustrator and standup comedian Donovan Goliath; artist blankets for Mr Price Home; and a call to enter the Nokia Asha A-List Competition.

Design Annotator: Fresh student meat & SA’s newest sex zine

by Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal) In our roundup this (particularly exciting) week we bring you: the launch of our Fresh Meat Graduate Series, Laura Windvogel (aka Lady Skollie)’s sex ‘zine; the rest of our Nokia Lumia Nothing Else Comes Close group exhibition; and design from Dutchmann, Traffic and Whippet.

Media Future: MicroNokia — who is saving whom?

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Microsoft’s US$7-billion dollar purchase of Nokia should come as no surprise. However, there may be a twist in this tale of high-tech romance.

Media Future: cellphones still at very early stage of their evolution

Measure cellphone evolution in automobile years, and you realise we still have a long way to go, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).

We all know about dog years (7 for every human year) and Internet years (the time it takes for online technology to evolve as much as other technology evolves in a year – typically a few months).

Cellphones and their rapid evolution supposedly obey the calendar of Internet time.

But what if we all have it wrong? What if cellphones are in fact still at a very early stage of their evolution? That sounds counter-intuitive, because they inspire such fear and bafflement.

That, however, is exactly how we can see we are still at an early stage in cellular history. See what happens when we look at the cellphone according to automobile years.

Media Future: Life left in Microsoft – and Nokia

Microsoft finds itself in the uncustomary role of underdog, but that only tells part of the story, says SA managing director Mteto Nyati in discussion with Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).

The one-time all-conquering giant of software, Microsoft, is suddenly finding itself performing an uncustomary role: that of underdog. Aside from a share price that had reached a record low earlier this year, it has also been taking a public relations beating.

The launch of the new Windows 8 operating system (OS) late last year did not set the market alight with new respect, and its recent unveiling of the specifications for the Xbox One entertainment device was vilified for the restrictions it placed on users.

For many companies, that would spell doom. In the past, that kind of response to previous products did indeed cast gloom into the hearts of all at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond near Seattle.

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?

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