Samsung: 9 per cent slide, justified?
Samsung Electronics’ new Galaxy S4 smartphone has smashed the company’s sales records – but that hasn’t been enough to prevent a nasty slide of nearly 9 per cent in its shares over the past three trading days.
The immediate trigger for the slide appears to have been a cautionary broker’s note on Friday from analysts at JPMorgan, who said third-quarter sales of the Galaxy S4 would undershoot their previous expectations. Continue reading »
Changing Mexico’s payment culture, one clip at a time
If Adolfo Babatz has his way, his startup company, Clip, might just single-handedly revolutionised how Mexicans pay for goods and services.
The idea is a simple one: transform smartphones into card reading terminals. But if successful, thousands if not millions of small mom-and-pop shops or even professionals in Mexico could soon be able to take payments from credit or debit cards for their products or services. Continue reading »
India’s star cricketers: cyberlures
On Sunday evening, the Mumbai Indians beat the Chennai Super Kings by a 23-run margin to win the sixth Indian Premier League cricket tournament. But the championship has ended not with pomp and glory but snared in a web of scandal, as the Delhi and Mumbai police investigate players and bookmakers for alleged spot-fixing.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, it now seems India’s biggest cricketing tournament is creating trouble far from the field too, with star players’ names being used as bait in cybercrime. Continue reading »
Samsung Galaxy S4: great start but does it have legs?
Samsung Electronics is on a roll thanks to the huge popularity of its latest smartphone. The Galaxy S4 has sold 10m units within a month of its release, making it Samsung’s fastest-selling smartphone ever – the Galaxy S4 reached the 10m mark in half the time taken by its predecessor. Continue reading »
Chinese pharma cracks down on African counterfeits
The reputation of Chinese pharmaceuticals in Africa has taken a hammering over the last couple of years. Far from curing disease, Chinese companies are accused of sitting at the centre of a vast counterfeiting industry dumping fake medicines on the continent at a cost of billions of dollars and countless lives.
But two Chinese pharmaceutical companies – Guilin Pharmaceuticals and Watson Global Pharmaceuticals – are breaking new ground by introducing SMS-based authenticity checks for their anti-malarial drugs in Africa. Continue reading »
Langfang: China’s cloud computing hub
Langfang, a small inland city in Hebei province, is emerging as an information technology services hub in northern China, with a large number of big data centres.
For years, this gritty industrial centre, lying about 50 km away from Beijing and 90 km from Tianjin, found it impossible to compete with these two modern metropolises.
But recently it has taken advantage of its location between them to develop high-end industries, such as data storage and cloud computing. Continue reading »
Alibaba and Sina Weibo: deal done. Now, about those revenues…
Shares in Sina Corp, the Nasdaq-listed Chinese online media group, rose nearly 21 per cent during trading on Monday after the company said it had agreed to sell 18 per cent of Weibo, its Twitter-like micro-blogging service, to Alibaba Group for $586m. The two came close to a similar deal five months ago. Now they have tied the knot. Continue reading »
Indian tablet makers take strides
Indian makers of tablet computers are elbowing their way into the domestic market, which is expected to expand rapidly in the next few years.
Although Samsung and Apple feature strongly in the Indian tablet market, figures from the International Data Corporation, an information technology research company, show India’s two leading domestic manufacturers have grabbed a market share of more than 20 per cent. Continue reading »
Wipro delivers solid results but adds to uncertain outlook for Indian IT
As India’s results season rolls on, Friday brings news from Wipro, which recently split its operations between information technology and non-IT businesses.
The results are generally positive – though India’s third largest IT company has disappointed markets with its forecasts for the current quarter. Continue reading »
Africa’s digital divide: still gaping
“Don’t let success stories like M-Pesa in Kenya fool you: the worldwide digital divide is still increasing and Africa remains the biggest victim.”
So says Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Cornells’ Johnson School of Management, talking to beyondbrics at the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2013. Continue reading »
Taiwan’s HTC: not so brilliant, but management is resilient
What makes HTC different from all the other struggling tech companies around these days?
Despite its falling sales, management at the Taiwanese smartphone maker has not been shaken up. The same chief executive has held the job for more than six years and the chairwoman has shot down local reports suggesting rifts in the leadership. That sets it apart from its peers, including Blackberry, Nokia — even Apple. So why have top management kept their jobs despite recent performance including a 98 per cent fall in profits in the first quarter? Continue reading »
Kenya elections: down to the wire
The race for Kenya’s presidency is heading to a nail-biting finish as the front-runner’s lead fades away and the votes counted show the decision going to a run-off for the first time since counting began four days ago.
With around 80 per cent of the constituencies declared, the early lead held by deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta has fallen away, slipping just below the 50 per cent mark needed to secure an outright win. His rival, prime minister Raila Odinga, is trailing with 44 per cent of the vote but results trickling in from Odinga strongholds are closing the gap. With 20 per cent of ballot papers left to count, the outcome could go either way. Continue reading »
Huawei hit by protests over illegal workers in Indonesia
Huawei, the Chinese telecoms group, is the latest international investor to feel the brunt of Indonesia’s increasingly vocal trade union movement.
Union activists and current and former employees have launched a campaign against what they say is Huawei’s use of illegal foreign workers, its union busting practices and other alleged violations of Indonesia’s tough labour laws. Continue reading »
[trend spot] Africa ♥ Chrome
Google’s dominance of global search is well known, and that includes Africa, where the US search engine has over 90 per cent market share.
Now it can add its browser Chrome to its trophy list – according to data from StatCounter it has just overtaken Firefox as the continent’s most popular means of browsing the web. Continue reading »
Cognizant buoyed by avoiding disappointment
For some months now Cognizant Technology Solutions, the US company which operates mostly in India, has been providing stiff competition for the big names in Hindustani IT services.
But following a string of unexpectedly good earnings reports from the likes of Infosys and Wipro, Cognizant published its figures on Thursday. And this time, it’s not so far ahead. Continue reading »
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