MTN has emerged as Africa’s most valuable brand and the only African global brand in the 2011 BrandFinance Global 500 (www.brandfinance.com). BrandFinance® Global 500 is the world’s most comprehensive brand value league table that ranks the most valuable brands across all major markets. On its 2011 league table, which was released recently, BrandFinance Global 500 [...]

In a bid to insulate Cameroon against popular uprisings similar to those that have toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt in recent months, the government of Cameroon has forced mobile operator MTN end its five-month old partnership with the micro-blogging giant Twitter, and to discontinue its Twitter short code service. This service allowed MTN subscribers to receive tweets for [...]

Google, internet search engine giants is teaming up with Citigroup (www.citigroup.com) and MasterCard (www.mastercard.com) to set up a mobile payment system that will turn Android phones into a kind of electronic wallet. The new technology, which is in its early stages, will allow consumers to wave their Android phones in front of a small reader [...]

BMW has announced it will invest $100m (about N15.4 billion) in start-ups developing location-based smartphone apps. The company will set up a “tech incubator” in New York City to develop these apps and establish an expert advisory board to guide decisions on future investments. The scheme is part of BMW’s recently-launched iVentures business, a venture [...]

Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry phones, has bought Ontario-based start-up tinyHippos (www.tinyhippos.com), creator of Ripple, a cross-platform mobile application development and testing tool. The company was acquired for its “extensive experience in Web and mobile widget/Web development,” according to Tyler Lessard, RIM’s VP of global alliances and developer relations. Terms of the [...]

The University of Wales (www.wales.ac.uk) has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT – http://web.mit.edu) Geospatial Data Centre – part of its Engineering Systems Division – to develop a training programme and solutions for cyber security research and education. The University of Wales explained in a statement that as the agreement has only [...]

Mozilla has launched a mobile browser for Android devices based on the same open technology platform as the desktop version with new features such as Firefox Sync. Users need to be using Firefox 4 on their PC to set up a Sync account, but once they have done this they can use their mobile device [...]

Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) has filed a formal complaint with the European Union Commission (www.ec.europa.eu) accusing Google (www.google.com) of abusing its position as the region’s dominant search engine. Microsoft chief counsel, Brad Smith, while enumerating the company’s objections, cited several examples of Google’s alleged unfair business practices, including using its ownership of YouTube to the disadvantage of [...]

Hackers have taken control of the iTunes accounts of many users, using them to make fraudulent purchases. Cyber criminals are able to crack the accounts by using brute force attacks, where an automated system tries thousands of popular passwords with each account name. Many people use the same passwords for their social media accounts, which [...]

Taiwan’s PC maker Acer, the world’s second largest PC vendor, has in a surprise move, replaced its chief executive, barely a week after it gave a downbeat outlook that wiped more than $1 billion (about N154 billion) off its market value in four days. Its Italian chief executive, Gianfranco Lanci, will leave the company immediately [...]