One Hero and one Zero (bad enough for two!) this week — Sony and MTN — and a look at the Marmite #GetItRight campaign.
Tag archives: Sony
Media Future: LG guns for market share with G4
by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Korean electronics manufacturer LG has spent the last two years proving its high-tech credentials as a smartphone technology leader. With the release of the G4, it is ready for more.
Media Future: Samsung and Sony heating up their challenge to the iPad Air
by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) The tablet market may have cooled down, but that hasn’t stopped Samsung and Sony from heating up their challenge to the iPad Air.
Media Future: PlayStation vs Xbox
by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Sony and Microsoft launched the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One within seven days of each other, but only Sony has made it into South Africa.
Media Future: Tablet war erupts with choice
A quality low-end tablet from ASUS and the imminent arrival of Sony’s flagship Tablet Z brings compelling new choices to the market, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
The war for the South African tablet market took a new turn last week with the unveiling of two major new contendors.
On Wednesday night, Taipei-based ASUS made their biggest foray yet into this market, unveiling not only a compelling new tablet, but also announcing distribution and marketing partnerships that signal its intentions as loudly as do its devices.
To start with, it officially launched the ASUS Fonepad, a 7” tablet designed to be used as much for apps as for making voice and video calls. Yes, you do look silly holding a 7” tablet to your ear, but ASUS has spotted a trend that silly-watchers missed: younger users are increasingly using their tablets for communication, and that communication is increasingly visual.
It means not only that they are more open to video calls than the older generation, but also that they like to look at their device and continue playing with it while making voice calls. And because music is such an integral element of the way a younger user engages with a tablet, headphones are standard gear.
Brand reinvention: Nintendo is about to lurch out of the tomb once more with Wii U GamePad
Nintendo is doing its own zombie act: coming back from the dead with the new Wii U, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)
Are you prepared for the Zombie apocalypse? It’s a concept that has long been viral on the Internet, inspiring numerous guidebooks on how to prepare for both the day and night of the living dead. You can even explore a version of Google Maps adapted to show the level of likely zombie infestation across the globe, and highlighting resources like pharmacies, hardware stores and police stations, where you would find handy resources to help survive the undead onslaught. Medicine, guns, axes and baseball bats will be high on your shopping list.
Sadly, preparing for the apocalypse only by reading a map is like learning to drive using a mapbook. You also need on-the-job training.
Enter an unlikely ally: Nintendo. It is the old-timer of the gaming console industry, and rapidly falling behind Sony and Microsoft. These global giants have brought the industry back to life, respectively, with a new version of the PlayStation Portable, called the Vita, and an add-on to the Xbox, the Kinect.
Brand reinvention: Kodak gets its next moment
Kodak may be dead as a camera and film company, but it is coming back to life in the “post-capture” world of printing, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
The Kodak moment is back. When the company that invented popular photography filed for bankruptcy protection five months ago, it provoked a tut-tut that was heard around the world. The company had been undone by the advent of digital photography – a technology it pioneered, but never managed to turn to its own advantage.
The “portable all-electronic still camera”, invented by Steve Sasson in 1975, was awarded US patent number 4,131,919, but that wasn’t enough to convince Kodak executives. As Sasson would write many years later, they could not understand why people would ever want to view their pictures on a TV.
Arthur Goldstuck calls 2012
Smartphones, tablets, undersea cables, fibre networks and the Cloud will all contribute to a storm of change in 2012.
2012 Year of reinvention for tech brands
Five of the world’s great hi-tech brands – Nokia, Sony, Ericsson, Huawei and HP – made announcements in the last three weeks that point to their reinvention in 2012, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK