Following the success of the 2011 iPhoneographySA exhibition held in Johannesburg, iStore and friend of BandwidthBlog, MarcForrest.com have partnered again to host this years event. Due to the popularity of iPhoneography in South Africa and the interest from different regions, this years iPhoneographySA Exhibition will be held in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.

“Based on the exceptional response to the 2011 iPhoneographySA exhibition, we are looking forward to seeing the entries from Johannesburg and Cape Town this year. We encourage anyone with an iPhone to enter the exhibition, as the user-friendly iPhone camera and availability of thousands of photography apps, makes it easy for even the most amateur photographer to take great photographs.” says Andrew Mundell, iStore CEO.

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Finally South Africans will have an affordable music subscription service to enjoy unlimited music streaming. While first world countries have been enjoying services like Spotify and Pandora for a while now, South Africans had to just buy albums if they wanted to listen music legally. Problem is, many of the international services use region blocking to prevent anyone outside their local regions to enjoy their music catalogue.  Simfy, together with its South African partner eXactmobile, is launching its product into the South African market and building up a local  presence branded “simfy Africa”. The mobile content specialists from Johannesburg will be taking over marketing, local support and payment handling for the market. The partnership is enabled by simfy’s new partner API, which was introduced at the beginning of July.

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The local number of Facebook users grew by 500 000 people or 11 percent to 4.9 million users in 2012 as the growth of smartphones in South Africa continues to fuel social media adoption.

Steven Ambrose, Strategy Worx CEO, says this was one of the key findings of Strategy Worx’s latest Social Media and Mobile infographic. Of the 4.9 million South Africans who have Facebook accounts, around 4 million have accessed Facebook from their mobile phones with smartphones playing an important role in the growth of Facebook in particular this year.

What is interesting about smartphone usage in South Africa is that BlackBerry and Nokia make up around 87 percent of smartphones in the country. While BlackBerry is undoubtedly the darling child of the local smartphone market with 46 percent market share, and Android phones are at 11 percent mark, it is Nokia who is the dark horse of smartphones with a market share of around 41 percent.

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Following the launch of its flat-rate Xtreme Data service, Nashua Mobile plans to extend access to the service to more Nokia devices as well as to launch a premium version of the service for smartphone users with higher-end data needs.

Launched in March this year as an alternative to the BlackBerry Internet Service, Xtreme Data from Nashua Mobile is a fixed-cost data service priced at R59 per month.  The flat-rate service – currently available for a range of Nokia devices – offers customers data for email, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, browsing and more.

To grow this community, Nashua Mobile has added many more Nokia devices to the ones already supported on the service. Xtreme Data has been extended to the Nokia Asha 300, 303 and 201. All of these devices boast the latest Nokia Browser, which offers up to 90% compression when browsing.  This is good news for users who don’t want to spend much more than R200 a month (including data) on their smartphones.

Now, Nashua Mobile will cater for the higher-end smartphones and data users with the launch of Xtreme Data Premium. With this Nashua Mobile will extend the service to include higher-end Nokia devices, such as Nokia’s Lumia family of smartphones: the Nokia Lumia 900, 800 (see our review here), 710 and 610. (more…)

One of our favourite Android phones, the One X (see our review here), is now available on most South African networks, but now its sister phones, the One S and One V, are available on Vodacom and MTN as well. HTC’s latest high end smartphone is an absolute beauty, with a great looking white polycarbonate shell while also sporting a massive display. So, where do you look if you want HTC’s latest and greatest?

TR McCrow, HTC Business Manager Sub Saharan Africa, confirms that the HTC One Range has launched across the mobile networks in South Africa with stock of the three phones in the range having been supplied to the various mobile network operators and service providers, who have or are in the process of launching them on various packages.

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RIM today announced the appointment of Alexandra Zagury as Managing Director for South Africa and Southern Africa.

Based in Johannesburg, Zagury will oversee all of RIM’s operations, sales and marketing efforts for the region.

Commenting on her appointment, Alexandra Zagury said: “I am excited to be taking on the role of Managing Director for the Southern African region, one of RIM’s most important growth markets. We are proud of the company’s success in this region, particularly in South Africa where BlackBerry is the leading smartphone brand, and I believe there is still tremendous opportunity for growth. Our goal is to maintain customer loyalty and expand RIM’s leading position in South Africa by being even more customer-focused and by working closely with our carrier and developer partners across the region.”

Robert Bose, Regional Managing Director for Africa and the Middle East at RIM said: “Alexandra brings a wealth of commercial, strategic and leadership experience to this role, and she will be instrumental in driving the next stage of our business growth in Southern Africa.”

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For the iPhone fans amongst us, Alan Knott Craig has already just given us even more choice when it comes to Apple’s phone. Until now SA could only choose between Vodacom and MTN if you wanted to get an iPhone with your contract.

MyBroadband has gotten hold of the initial pricing, and there is more good news if you want to get hold of the previous generation (but still great) iPhone 4 model with 8GB of storage. The 4S is also there, in all its sizes:

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Research In Motion today announced a stylish new smartphone for socially-connected customers in South Africa. The new BlackBerry Curve 9320 features all the BlackBerry messaging and social features that make it easier to connect and share with everyone around you. The BlackBerry Curve 9320 also offers 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity as well as longer battery life to help customers make the most of their day.

“The BlackBerry Curve 9320 is a truly social smartphone and is a great addition to the BlackBerry Curve series, which has propelled BlackBerry to being voted the ‘Coolest Brand Overall’ by South Africa’s youth in the recent Sunday Times Generation Next Brand Survey Awards,” said Rui Brites, Director Product Management for RIM in South Africa. “This new BlackBerry Curve model is designed to make it incredibly easy for customers to be socially-connected and we expect it will be especially popular with young people.”

The new BlackBerry Curve 9320 smartphone has everything a customer needs to stay connected to the people and things that matter most to them. It features the best keyboard in its class for quick and easy typing, and it even includes a new, dedicated BBM key.

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