The Herald

Apple has announced a new plan to make its products officially available in Nigeria through its official Apple channels. This is the first time the company will make such move in the Nigerian market.

The growing importance of the Nigerian market and the need to give Nigerian buyers a new level of customer experience and full product guarantee may have attracted Apple's new move to the Nigerian market.

The outlets will ensure products available through official channel partners in the country.

Econet Zimbabwe has moved the EcoCash service from a platform supplied by Pattern Matched Technologies to one powered by Comviva. The Comviva platform, called "Mobiquity", has been widely adopted globally by over 55 leading banks and mobile phone operators.

The migration was accomplished with minimal disruption and paves way for the introduction of an over-the-counter merchant payment functionality that allows EcoCash customers to pay for their retail purchases using EcoCash.

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority says it will spend at least US$21 million from the Universal Services Fund to construct 43 new base stations in under-serviced areas throughout the country.

The USF is a fund into which the country's licensed telecommunications companies contribute 2 percent of their annual revenue.

The fund was established to finance the expansion of telecommunications services in outlying areas which are under-serviced.

Small to medium enterprises have been urged to utilise new information technology software in order to improve business efficiency. Pastel (South Africa) product manager Alfred Nhira said most companies in the country, especially the smaller businesses, were using antiquated technologies. He was speaking at a recent IT seminar hosted by Omni Africa.

"Most of the software programmes that most companies are still using are now outdated, inasmuch they are costly to maintain and difficult to use as well as susceptible to being broken into," said.

Econet Wireless and Telecel, two of the country's three mobile phone service providers, last week refuted claims they are overcharging customers. Representatives of the companies appeared separately before the Portfolio Committee on Media, Communication and Information Technology to give evidence on the state of their operations. They said their tariffs compared favourably with those prevailing in the region.

One of the country's leading Internet service providers, Utande, has introduced an innovative broadband service designed for households and small businesses. The latest offering from the data services provider that falls under the Dandemutande Investments group promises to provide unrivalled connection quality, true broadband speeds and unbeatable service for households and small businesses.

Zimbabwean firms are set to benefit from a new cloud computing platform, the Sage Enterprise Resource Planning X3 Cloud.

The new Internet-based computing product, which will allow for sharing of resources, software and information, is a partnership between Chips Computing Services, which represents Sage Enterprise in Zimbabwe, and Utande Internet Services.

The product was launched in Harare last week. In terms of the partnership, Utande Internet Services is supporting Sage with "cloud" infrastructure.