INTERVIEW. A young entrepreneur in South Africa has teamed up with Openmoko to distribute the Neo Freerunner to Africa.
Nyasha Mutsekwa spoke to Biz-News.com at the sidelines of Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg of his mission.
The Neo Freerunner is an open-source phone, which allows developers and enthuasists alike access to the source code and hardware schematics to customize the device to their hearts content.
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INTERVIEW. Kenya has taken a leading role in Africa by embarking on effective use of Mobile Internet to expose acts of political violence, murder and torture, Ory Okollo the founder of Ushahidi.com told Biz-news.com
In an interview on the sidelines of Mobile Web Africa conference in Sandton recently, executive director of Kenya’s Ushahidi, Ory Okolloh, said her organization was primarily established to expose crisis situations to empower Africa.
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Research in Motion announced acquisition of Torch Mobile, the Toronto based developer that has created Iris – an open-source browser for mobile devices. As Blackberry users look for innovation, RIM take a bold step in redefining their browser.
The number of smartphones shipped with open source operating systems (OS) will increase from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014.
That’s the prediciton of telecom consultants Juniper Research, who found that operating systems and applications are playing an increasingly important role in the differentiation of new smartphones.
Hot on the heels of launching its third Android smartphone, HTC is forecasting its US handset sales to grow by at least 50 per cent this year.
With the arrival of the Hero, the Taiwanese phone maker is establishing itself as the leading manufacturer of the Linux-based devices.
Boxee is extending its media center access to Windows and will shortly change its "alpha" status to "beta".
The open source media site has also announced four major new app partnerships that will be available to everyone downloading its software.
Transverse has announced the availability of the first open source business support solutions (BSS) solution for telecom service providers.
Chris Couch, chief operations officer at Transverse, said its blee(p) Enterprise Edition offers a telecom back office solution that is flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of service providers.
The CEO of Gizmo5 Michael Robertson has responded to last week’s announcement of Skype for SIP by posting a comparison (see below) of the new service and his own company’s OpenSky.
While welcoming Skype’s initiative, he described it as a "vaporware announcement" with "murky pricing details".
There has been speculation that the launch of the next Google Android-powered handset is just days away.
That appears to be premature according to BGR, which claims the launch has in fact been delayed until April due to "software issues".
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Devoteam is to release a Blackberry version of its VoIP client OnePhone that runs on mobile platforms enabling voice calls over an IP network.
smartphone.biz-news spoke to Christoph Wernli, business development manager at Devoteam, about the convergence market and the opportunities offered by open-source operating systems.