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Loose Wire blog

• Samsung and phone companies [BBC version] May 19, 2012
  This is a piece I'm recording for the BBC World Service. It's based loosely on my piece about possible limits to Samsung's impressive foray into smartphones.  The interesting thing about covering technology for a living is that while pretty much every business within  the sector  very very different, but all are, or want to be, [...]
• ZTE confirms security hole in U.S. phone May 18, 2012
  This is a piece I wrote with my colleague Lee Chyen Yee on the ZTE vulnerability.  ZTE Corp, the world's No.4 handset vendor and one of two Chinese companies under U.S. scrutiny over security concerns, said one of its mobile phone models sold in the United States contains a vulnerability that researchers say could allow [...]
• Facebook can’t take Asian growth for granted May 17, 2012
  A piece I wrote ahead of Facebook's IPO, casting a skeptical eye over assumptions that Asia would continue to be a source of major growth for the company. Even as Facebook fever grips investors ahead of the social networking giant's potential $100 billion-plus initial public offering, its breakneck growth in Asia may be slowing as [...]
• Podcast: Cameras May 16, 2012
  The BBC World Service Business Daily version of my piece on cameras. (The Business Daily podcast is here. Script is here.) Loose Wireless 120516 To listen to Business Daily on the radio, tune into BBC World Service at the following times, or click here. Australasia: Mon-Fri 0141*, 0741 East Asia: Mon-Fri 0041, 1441 South Asia: [...]
• Cameras [BBC column] May 9, 2012
  This is the script for a piece I recorded for the BBC World Service. It' s based on a piece I wrote for my employer, Reuters. We always assume that when a new technology comes along it will displace the old. And that tends to be the case. But displace doesn't mean delete, remove, consign [...]
• Social media stress? There’s an app for that May 8, 2012
  A piece on how one marketing company is capitalizing on what it says is growing stress among social media users.  Nestle, purveyor of the decades-old KitKat snack, has launched an app it says addresses a growing problem among young social media users - giving them a break from the stress of posting updates by doing [...]
• In a Samsung Galaxy far, far away … will Android still rule? May 3, 2012
  A piece I wrote on potential roadbumps in Samsung's ride to smartphone dominance.  Samsung Electronics is the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and biggest user of Google's Android operating system. And, for some, that's the problem. Samsung's meteoric rise - in the first quarter of 2011 it shipped fewer smartphones than Apple, […]
• RIM [BBC version] April 24, 2012
  In some ways our world all looks very similar. Prefab coffee and fast food chains, Cars that all look the same. Everyone on Facebook. But what we--and by we I include the people who actually produce and sell these goods and services--don't do a good job of is understanding while the global products may be [...]
• Outsider Ren pits Huawei against the world April 23, 2012
  A piece I wrote for Reuters with Lee Chyenyee:  (Reuters) – In the 1990s, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei visited the United States several times, hoping to learn from its leaders of industry about how to turn his Chinese telecoms equipment maker into a global company. On one trip in 1992, in the days before China had credit [...]
• WhatsApp [BBC commentary] April 17, 2012
  You may remember a time, not too long ago, when to make a long distance phone call you had to go through an operator. You would wait as you could hear her asking another operator for a connection. It was not always successful. A lot depended on the perseverance of the operator--especially when trying to [...]