Weekly Roundup #15: Mxit, Mobile World Congress, Apple car and CT is not Silicon Valley

Welcome to Weekly Roundup, a podcast where the Burn Media team discusses all the biggest news from the past seven days in tech.

This week, Stuart Thomas, Jacques Coetzee, and Andy Walker kicked things off with a preview of Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in Barcelona, Spain next week. The show is set to include a plethora of new smartphone and wearable launches.

One South African company which you wouldn’t have bet against having a presence a few years ago, but which has since seen a dramatic reversal of fortunes is Mxit. The team discusses how what was once one of South Africa’s most celebrated tech companies is now battling for survival.

One possible reason for its collapse is the weight of expectation placed on it. People wanted it to be the South African version of a Silicon Valley success story but, as Elizabeth Gould points out on Ventureburn, The Silicon Cape is not Silicon Valley. That may however be a good thing.

One area where Silicon Valley is investing plenty of time and money right now though is motoring. Taking a lead from Ryan Bubear’s investigation on the subject, we look at what happens if Apple and Google actually take their car projects into production.