Samsung Galaxy S3 hits 10 million sales mark early

Samsung Galaxy S3 hits 10 million sales mark early

by Steven Musil

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Handset maker's chief had predicted the Android-powered smartphone would sell 10 million units by the end of July.

Samsung's chief executive predicted last month that sales of the Galaxy S3 would hit 10 million by the end of July and it appears to have passed that milestone a little early.

Shin Jong-kyun, the president of Samsung's information technology and mobile communication division, told reporters that the Android-powered smartphone surpassed the 10 million sales mark but did not reveal specific sales figures, according to the Yonhap news agency. That translate to about 190,000 Galaxy S3s sold every day for the past two months.

Samsung's flagship handset, which available through AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, is one of the most sought-after smartphones on the market. Last month, Sprint announced that "overwhelming demand" had forced the carrier to delay the handset's June 21 launch.

However, keeping it on retailers' shelves has been a bit of a battle. The phone has been swept up in a patent battle between Apple and Samsung, with the iPhone maker attempting to secure an injunction against U.S. sales of the device. However, that effort was tabled due to court docket overload.

The Galaxy S3, which offers a dual-core processor, a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a 1,280x720-pixel resolution, has also been the target of an Apple injunction attempt, but that effort was tabled last month when Koh ruled there were already too many issues to consider. CNET awarded the Galaxy S3 an Editors' Choice rating, earning four stars out of five. Reviewer Jessica Dolcourt said that the handset is "an excellent, top-end phone," and includes "high-performing hardware and creative software features."

LG Display Workers Charged Over Samsung Mobile Technology Theft

By Saeromi Shin

Six employees of LG Display Co. (034220), the world's second-largest flat-panel maker, have been charged over theft of technology from Samsung Mobile Display Co.

The six leaked or stole Samsung Mobile's organic light- emitting diode technology and business secrets, according to an indictment filed with Suwon District Court in South Korea. The accused include two former Samsung Mobile employees.

Samsung Mobile requested LG Display formally apologize and take steps needed to prevent reoccurrence, the company, merged with Samsung Display Co. this month, said in an e-mail today in response to questions. LG Display systematically took Samsung's OLED technology and core staff to overcome its own shortcomings, according to the e-mail.

The information obtained is widely known in the industry and isn't considered a trade secret, LG Display said in a separate e-mail. Seoul-based LG Display said it plans to take legal action against Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), for defamation.

LG Display rose 1.8 percent to 23,100 won as of 11:46 a.m. in Seoul trading, while Samsung Electronics advanced 1.1 percent to 1,165,000 won. Samsung Display isn't publicly traded.

OLED televisions are as thin as 4 millimeters (0.2 inch) and produce sharper images than liquid-crystal-display models. Shipments of OLED TVs may surge 62-fold to 2.1 million sets in 2015 from 34,000 in 2012, according to an estimate by Englewood, Colorado-based IHS Inc.'s iSuppli.

How to Delete/Clear Browsing History on Chrome for Android and iOS

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Chrome web browser for iOS is released some days back and now it has become one of the most popular app downloaded from the App Store. The popularity of this browser has risen since then. Chrome for mobile is available for two of the most popular platforms – Android and iOS, but for Android, Chrome is only available for devices with Android 4.0 Ice cream Sandwich and above. This means that Chrome can be used only on devices like Samsung Galaxy SIII, HTC One V and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which runs on Android 4.0. Like most browsers, Chrome also lets you view and clear your browsing history, but sometimes things can get a little tricky. Let's learn how to delete/clear history on Chrome for mobile.

Clear Browsing History on Chrome for Android

Chrome for Android doesn't offer any such option from where you can delete the browsing history. That's why, just type "chrome:history" in the omnibox (the address bar). This also works on the desktop version for Chrome. This should open your complete browsing history.

If you want to delete a particular website (URL) then tap it to select that URL and then tap on "Remove selected items". Of course you can select multiple items and then remove them altogether from the history. But if you want to remove/clear your entire history, then tap on "Clear all browsing data".

Clear Browsing History on Chrome for iOS (iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone)

Typing "chrome:history" in the omnibox won't work on Chrome for iOS. It should have worked as it works on all other platforms, but strangely this trick doesn't work on iOS for now. To clear browsing history, open Chrome and tap on menu button next to address bar. You'll now be able to see various options, just tap on "Settings" and then "Clear browsing data."

Changes ring in the smartphone market

By Gao Yuan

Four out of the top five best-selling mobile devices in China were manufactured by Chinese companies, data from Sino Market Research Ltd showed in April. Chinese smartphone makers have managed to dominate the low- and middle-end market over the past several years. Provided to China Daily

Chinese companies look to cheaper end but suffer lower profit margins

Chinese smartphone manufacturers are taking more than half of the market share in China but find it hard to increase their profit margins, while the entry of newcomers will make competition more intense, industry insiders said.

In April, four out of the top five best-selling mobile devices in China were manufactured by indigenous Chinese companies, data from Sino Market Research Ltd showed. The top four local brands took more than 40 percent of the total sales volume in the market.

South Korean electronics maker Samsung Electronic Co's smartphones topped the best-selling list in April in the nation, selling more than 2 million smartphones, data from Sino showed.

"Chinese smartphone makers have managed to dominate the low- and middle-end market over the past several years but large numbers of buyers are price-sensitive and only willing to spend a little money in purchasing mobile phones," said Henry Lin, chairman and co-chief executive officer of NQ Mobile Inc, the world's largest mobile security provider.

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Only a few Chinese smartphone makers are in the high-end market. Lower priced cellphones usually have narrow profit margins.

"Apple Inc took only about 2 percent of the market share in the smartphone market but it took more than 80 percent of the profits," said Lin,

He added that high-end cellphone makers are willing to pay a higher cost in boosting innovation and user experience because their customers are expecting the best product performance.

The profit statement for the smartphone industry shows a more difficult situation for Chinese makers. Samsung and Apple Inc's products hold 99 percent of the profit, while local brands have to compete with other overseas manufacturers for the remaining 1 percent of profit, Southern Metropolis Daily reported, citing research released by Huabao Securities Co.

Battlefield

Moreover, overseas cellphone giants are targeting the Chinese market as the nation's smartphone penetration rate remains at about 10 percent.

In March, Nokia Corp introduced its first phone that runs on Microsoft Inc's Windows Phone operating system to the Chinese market. The move was believed to be a signal that the Finnish cellphone maker was trying to maintain its hold in the country's mobile phone market.

"The only way to change the situation in the Chinese market is to introduce more great products," said Stephen Elop, chief executive officer of Nokia.

Most of the local brands are focusing on producing lower-price devices - costing about 1,000 yuan ($159) each. Sales were boosted by contract phones. High-end cellphone makers are concentrating on lifting user experience because their customers seem to worry less about the price of the product.

"China has great potential for generating about 1 billion smartphone users over the next several years," said Lin, adding that one user will have more than one device at the same time, creating an even larger market for mobile device makers.

High-end brand makers seem to find it easier to sell their devices in China.

In April, China's smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp sold 150,000 phones in just 12 minutes as it launched the seventh round of an online sale.

The company makes high-end performing smartphones at affordable prices.

The company's phones are priced at 2,000 yuan. More than 1.65 million units had been sold by April since its debut in late October 2011, said a Xiaomi spokesman.

A number of Chinese Internet companies started to go mobile this year, their first incursion into the smartphone market.

In May, the Chinese Web search engine Baidu Inc teamed up with Sichuan Changhong Electric Co, China's home appliance maker, to promote low-end smartphones. The model was sold for less than 900 yuan.

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The e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd introduced its first smartphone based on a self-developed operating system this month. The price of the new gadget was priced at 999 yuan, the same as a bluetooth earphone for an iPhone.

On the same day, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd, an Internet-based IT firm, also released a slightly higher priced smartphone, Bambook. The highest priced for the device is 1,499 yuan, enough to buy two Samsung Galaxy SII phones.

Qihoo 360 Technology Co, an Internet security company, also announced it would enter the mobile phone market this year.

Despite the growing competition, industry insiders believe there is still a lot of room for newcomers as the market remains young and heavily relies on the development of the mobile Internet, an even younger industry.

"The silver bullet for Chinese competitors to survive is to find a segment of the market and make specialized devices for that particular sector," said Lin.

Cellcom Lowest Signals Need for New Markets: Israel Overnight

By Shoshanna Solomon and Sridhar Natarajan

Israel's mobile phone market has grown enough to ensure sufficient competition in the industry and the government is encouraging companies to enter the fixed- line and cloud computing markets to augment revenue.

Cellcom Israel Ltd. (CEL) (CEL), Partner Communications Co. (PTNR) and Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Corp. (BEZQ), the country's three largest mobile phone operators, lost more than $15 billion in market value this year as government measures boosted competition in the industry and reduced costs for customers. Cellcom fell 5.9 percent to 21.3 shekels, or the equivalent of $5.32, the lowest level on record at the close in Tel Aviv today. Partner declined 6.9 percent to 12.8 shekels, or $3.20, the lowest since February 2003.

"The number of players in the market is the number we wanted," Eden Bar Tal, the director general at Israel's Ministry of Communication, said in a telephone interview on July 19. "Players who want to increase revenues should do this by providing additional services and not by taking advantage of a lack of competition."

The three stocks are the worst performers on the benchmark TA-25 Index this year as the measure lags behind the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite Index. (CCMP) The Bloomberg Israel-US Equity Index (ISRA25BN) of the most-traded Israeli companies in New York recorded the largest weekly rise this year as Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (MLNX) (MLNX) surged 35 percent.

The government required service providers cut fees by disbanding inter-network call charges and opening up the sector to new competition.

'Heating Up'

Hot Telecommunication System Ltd. (HOT), along with Golan Telecom Ltd., moved into Israel's mobile-phone space on May 14. Golan, partly owned by French entrepreneur Xavier Niel, began offering unlimited wireless services for less than 100 shekels, or $24.96, per month.

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The products compete with packages of Cellcom, Partner and Bezeq, which controlled 95 percent of the Israeli mobile-phone market, according to data from the Ministry of Communication.

"Pricing wars are heating up," Michael Klahr, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., wrote in a an e-mailed report on July 16. New operators like Golan Telecom and Hot will grab 7.7 percent of mobile phone subscribers from the incumbents within a year, a number that is higher than initial expectations, Klahr said.

Bezeq, the Tel Aviv-based company, which operates in the mobile phone industry through its unit Pelephone, gained 3 percent to 4.17 shekels, trimming this year's loss to 39 percent.

'Dynamic and Developing'

Cellcom, Israel's largest mobile phone provider, fell to the lowest level on record last week in New York as Partner, the nation's second-largest, capped its biggest five-day slump in two months. The company's New York shares have fallen 62 percent to $3.39 this year.

Rami Levi Chain Stores Hashikma Marketing 2006 Ltd. (RMLI), Israel's third-largest supermarket operator, began offering mobile-phone services in December in cooperation with Pelephone. The company said last month that the service now has 56,000 customers and that it's in talks with other operators to provide cheaper wireless packages to consumers.

"The telecom market is dynamic and developing all the time," Bar Tal said. "Players who want to increase revenue should do this by providing additional services and not by taking advantage of a lack of competition." Israel has a mobile phone subscription penetration rate of 130.2 percent compared to 130.5 percent for Europe, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Industries.

Israel's TA-25 Index (TA-25) has dropped 1.2 percent this year, lagging behind an advance of 8.4 percent for the S&P Index and 12.3 percent on the Nasdaq Composite Index.

Mellanox Surges

Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland, has about 60 companies trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside the U.S. after China. The country is also home to more startup companies per capita than the U.S.

The Bloomberg Israel-U.S. index recorded the biggest weekly advance since December 2011, led by gains for Mellanox, the largest company on the gauge.

Mellanox fell 3.4 percent to 361 shekels, or the equivalent of $90.12, in Tel Aviv today. The New York-traded shares reached $89.24 last week.

The company more than doubled its second-quarter sales over the same period last year and its third-quarter revenue forecast was 50 percent more than analysts' estimates.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under ￡200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - Design and Connectivity
Watch the video review
The 7-inch tablet is seen as the most obvious alternative to a 10-incher like the new iPad or Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. But if you look around, there aren't that many hot contenders. The Amazon Kindle Fire isn't available here yet, the BlackBerry PlayBook was virtually stillborn and the Acer Iconia A100 had a disappointing screen. Samsung is out to change all that. Its Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has a PLS screen, expandable memory, a dual-core processor and a sub-￡200 price. What's not to like?
Design
With its gaze set on the budget buyer who doesn't want to make do with a cheapo no-name tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 doesn't have a particularly dynamic or interesting design. Its inch-thick screen bezel looks chunky, it has a plastic rear and while hardly rotund at 10mm thick, its form feels designed to be comfortable rather than razor-thin.
It feels much better-made than the vast majority of budget tablets we've tested, though. In making the plastic rear plate non-removable, Samsung has been able to fashion a solid and strong-feeling slab. And while it doesn't have that cool touch of metal, it has been textured to afford it a similar feel on the finger to anodised aluminium.
The front of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is glass. It's not Gorilla Glass as far as we can tell, but feels just the same under the finger and avoids the "oil slick" effect that plagued many Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets last year.
One of the best things about a 7in tablet is that you can hold it in one hand without developing muscles in weird places within your forearm. At just 344g, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 feels right at home in one mitt - and in this situation the generous bezel comes in handy, giving you space to rest your thumb without obstructing the screen. It's almost as if professional designers produced this thing...
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Connectivity
As with the other tablets in the Galaxy range, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 keeps its on-body connections simple. It features what's arguably the most important, though - a plastic flap on its right edge covers a microSD card slot. Its 16GB of internal memory (8GB version also available) is already reasonably generous, but this slot makes upgrading quick, cheap and painless.
The 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge, right next to a teeny pinhole microphone. Its speakers are - sensibly - placed poles apart on the bottom edge - and there are two of them. Getting stereo sound in a tablet is a neat extra, but it's not particularly well-executed here. When held in landscape, while watching a movie for example, all sound comes from the right side, providing zero sense of stereo image.
The level of volume these teeny speakers can produce is reasonable, but sound quality is not a match for the iPad. It has decent body and scale, but little fidelity or richness.
Between the speaker duo sits the proprietary adaptor socket, used to both charge the tablet and transfer data to its brainbox. The positive side of using this dock is that it makes producing the supportive desktop and car docks (available, but not included) easy, but also ensures losing the cable is more of a problem - it proprietary sockets are a bit of an irritation generally. The tablet battery doesn't charge when you plug the cable into a computer, either.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers both MTP and PTP transfer modes, which tells your computer that it's either a media player or camera when plugged-in. As long as you're not running an ancient version of Windows (or any version of Mac OS) you can drag and drop files directly onto the memory using Windows Explorer. Testing with a Mac, it seems Samsung sync software Kies is needed to transfer files.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich. This is the upgraded version of Honeycomb, which was the first tablet-focused version of Google's operating system.
Samsung has dropped-in some of its own TouchWiz touches too - this is Samsung's proprietary user interface - and in all honesty it doesn't look all that different to last year's Honeycomb-based tablets.
Whatever way you hold the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - landscape or portrait - on the home screen there's shortcut and notifications bar at the bottom of the screen, and links to Google search and the apps menu up top.
Although reasonably intuitive, this is a layout that feels more at home on a 10in tablet than a smaller one like this. When held portrait, it feels as though you should be able to access most features with your two thumbs - but you can't thanks to Google's obsession with spreading links across the screen. And having the toolbar constantly sitting at the bottom of the screen can make the display feel a little cramped - a feeling you don't get with 10.1in Android tablets.
It's almost enough to make you miss the days of Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablets running what's essentially a phone OS, like the original 7in Samsung Galaxy Tab. We say almost because the benefits of a proper tablet OS still far outweigh the niggles - key among them having tablet-optimised apps to play with.
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TouchWiz Extras
Samsung UI TouchWiz doesn't dramatically alter the DNA of the Android OS, but it does tack some neat extras on. Among the most front-facing is the screenshot-taking button on the home screen toolbar. Previous versions of Android have made it bafflingly difficult to take a screenshot, and we find it a most welcome addition.
Samsung AllShare also comes pre-installed. This is the manufacturer's own DLNA interface, and it's consistent across many home gadgets including TVs, phones and Blu-ray players. It lets you stream media over Wi-Fi and - as long as each end is AllShare compatible - takes most of the fiddliness out of the pairing process.
TouchWiz offers its own keyboard, too. It's not particularly pretty, but it makes typing quick and accurate on the 7in screen, and if you really don't like it, putting a replacement in its stead isn't difficult.
Apps and Games
Activities that benefit most from the large screen of a tablet, over a smaller smartphone display, are things like web browsing, video-viewing and email-sifting.
Enriching browsing, Adobe Flash support is in, and the 7in form is a good size for reading web pages. With a good web connection pages render fairly quickly, and the responsive capacitive touchscreen makes whizzing around them a joy. A higher-resolution display would make reading more comfortable, but it's like to be a while before we see super high pixel density tablets do the limbo under the ￡200 barrier.
Games and apps suffer from the lower resolution a little too, but not primarily because of a lack of pure pixel density. It's more an issue of compatibility and optimisation.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has full access to the Google Play app store and plenty of its hundreds of thousands of apps and games. However, with an unusual 1,024 x 600 pixel resolution, many apps and games are not fully optimised for the tablet, and some are not compatible at all.
For example, in the popular Unreal Engine 3-powered Dungeon Defenders Second Wave, the graphics appear to be upsized from those of a lower resolution device (most likely 800 x 480 pixels or similar). When using most 1,280 x 800 Android tablets, such as a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, they're nice 'n' crisp.
With high pixel density devices flavour of the month, it is unlikely that many more devices of this resolution will be made. And therefore developer support is unlikely to increase much. In fairness, most games look and play just fine.
It's a pity, though, because the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 packs a decent punch for an affordable tablet. In the AnTuTu benchmark it scored 5220 points. As a point of reference, last year's similarly-priced, dual-core Time2touch HC701A scored just 2870 - and that seemed pretty zippy at the time. The Tab's CPU is a TI OMAP 4430 dual-core 1GHz model with 1GB of RAM, roughly comparable with last year's top-end Android tablets.
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Screen
Using Samsung's PLS display technology, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers decent viewing angles and image quality. PLS is Samsung's own take on IPS, the core screen tech used in Apple's iPad tablets.
It's not quite on-par with the best of IPS though, with significant contrast shift creeping in when the display is tilted in one particular angle. As it's not an angle you'd normally view the tablet from, though, it's not a big problem.
A deficiency that's much more noticeable is screen resolution. With a 1,024 x 600 pixel screen, the Tab 2 7.0 offers the same pixel count as the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and the comparable Acer Iconia A100. Although it offers slightly higher pixel density than the first and second iPads, with 169dpi, you can easily discern individual pixels if you get reasonably up-close - when reading, for example.
Video Compatibility
It's somewhat-less noticeable with less high-contrast images, such as those of movies. And, in the Samsung tradition, video codec support is pretty good. MKV support is included - handy for video downloads - although unusually it failed to play some of our less challenging test files. It supports Xvid and DivX, but stumbled over one of our SD DivX tests, suggesting some more software optimisation is needed. A patch perhaps, Samsung?
There's not need to wait around, though, as third-party apps can use software rendering to play anything not supported natively by the tablet.
Battery Life
Tasked with playing a looping SD-quality video at 50 per cent screen brightness, with wireless turned off, the 4000mAh battery lasted for six and a half hours - pretty close to the claimed figure of seven hours. While it outlasts most tablets of its size, and most tablets under ￡200, this is lower performance than premium 10.1in tabs and well below the iPad's 10-plus hours.
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Cameras
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has two cameras. There's a VGA user-facing camera for video chat and a 3.2-megapixel main sensor that captures photos at up to 2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution.
It's a basic affair. It doesn't have autofocus, lacking any control over the subject of your shots, and there's no flash. The only extras beyond the stripped-back basics of sepia/black and white filters you're treated to are Smile Shot and a panorama mode. Image quality is fairly poor and video capture maxes out at 720p.
Value
Starting at ￡199.99 for the 8GB version, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is much cheaper than most of Samsung's tablets. It's also much better than the vast majority of tablets we've tested selling at under ￡200. Lacking a flashy design and top-end specs, its higher-end models, such as the more-expensive 3G editions, don't make a great deal of sense. However, as an alternative to smaller ￡150-250 tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook, HTC Flyer and Acer Iconia A100, it's the pick of the bunch.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under ￡200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good. The one lingering concern is that the screen resolution ensures games optimisation and support isn't up there with the best.
'Mad Men' recap, 'Signal 30': Red-faced and white-knuckled
By Mark Maurer/The Star-Ledger
For Pete Campbell, the question isn't "When are things going to get back to normal?"
It's "When is copycatting early '60s Don going to earn me respect?" Or, "When does success become satisfying?" Don in his heyday didn't have nearly this many enemies.
The latest "Mad Men" - which is a bit heavy on the match cuts (that's a film editing term) - looks at business relations, masculine yearning and the scary slo-mo car collision that's come to parallel Pete's middle years.
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Don tries to dodge a dinner party at the Campbell's suburban abode that sounds about as dull as his old plans with Betty. But he appears impervious to Trudy's stamina. The party is no more than a painfully transparent paean to Don, who is practically declared the man of the house on top of receiving the finest cut of steak. Pete flaunts his new stereo by playing classical music too loud. The kitchen sink Pete thought he fixed spits water like a geyser. And he gets one-upped by handyman/everyman Don, whom it only seems fair to compare with Jon Hamm in the category of surprise talents. On the way home, Don drunkenly suggests he and Megan make a baby.
Pete takes a driver's education class, during which he develops a crush on Jenny (Amanda Bauer), a high-school girl bound for Ohio State. They're both nostalgic for simpler times, and talk about taking turns driving to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. If they got into an accident, he'd have a lot of explaining to do. Jenny, if she even saw Pete in a romantic light, falls for an athletic classmate nicknamed "Handsome" instead. The track star (Parker Young) is more her speed.
Ken is still writing depressing short stories, now under the alias of Ben Hargrove. He prefers to keep his literary passions a secret, for fear of paying the price in the cutthroat world of office politics. First, Peggy catches him with a prospective publisher, then Cynthia touts his tales at the party. (Worlds are colliding. And that's not the only construable "Seinfeld" reference. Peggy's line "I thought we had a pact!" brings to mind Jerry and George's botched agreement to mature and settle down.) After Pete spreads the word about his stories, Roger makes Ken feel like his job could be on the line if he doesn't commit to one craft only. Ken chooses to switch alias - this time, Dave Algonquin, named after New York's Algonquin Hotel, or the cocktail.
Rebecca drags Lane to a pub to cheer on the ultimately victorious British team at the televised World Cup. Dining with them is Edwin Baker (David Hunt), a Jaguar Cars public relations executive who's in the market for an advertising campaign and wants to hear from an account man. Later, Lane, the financial chief, tells the partners and wants to handle his first account. Pete bullies him about it, speculating it's a costly endeavor with measly returns. Roger steps in to mentor Lane on the art of schmoozing clients. We never thought we'd hear Roger speak of feigning drinking. He instructs Lane to obtain answers by being smooth and artificially empathetic. When Lane fails, the big boys take Edwin to dinner.
"Lane couldn't close a car door," Pete sneers. Sure, Lane lacks an account man's bravado, but at least he knows how to drive a car.
Pete, Roger and Don take Edwin to a high-end brothel, where each man gets his jollies except Don. On the cab ride home, Don makes him feel shame for cheating on Trudy. Don says he feels Pete has everything right now; only a fool would test it.
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The next day, Lane reveals to the partners they've lost the Jaguar account. Off-camera, Edwin's wife caught her husband with chewing gum on his pubic hair, Lane says. Because Pete spearheaded the tag team initiative, he's the first to be dealt Lane's wrath. He fires back a nasty, and untrue, riposte: "Our need for you disappeared the day after you fired us."
Lane engages Pete in a boxing match in the conference room. Don eagerly closes the curtains. As Joan and Peggy eavesdrop from the adjacent room, Lane gets in two clean blows that drop Pete to the table, then the floor. In Lane's office, Joan says it's good to be different. He misreads the signal and kisses her. The move is an almost startling indication that Lane, too, is one of the boys. Being the good work friend she is, Joan accepts it as one elongated faux pas.
In the elevator, Pete admits to Don "I have nothing" (no Whitney Houston tie-in) and begins to weep. That's a lesson to Don: Don't ever leave the office without Megan at your side.
NOTES
- Whose marriage is faring the best this week? Betty and Henry are out of the running, so that leaves the Drapers, the Cosgroves, the Campbells, the Sterlings and the Pryces. Pete and Roger were both unfaithful; Ken feels most alive when he's writing while his wife's asleep; and Rebecca's likely upset about the bubblegum incident, though Lane is in the clear despite minor bruising. Although Don didn't want to wear the sport jacket, it's fair to say he and Megan are going strong. Neither can seem to resist the other's seductive power. It's tough to gauge the enduring strength of Don's feelings for Megan, because, as viewers, we entered his marriage with Betty on the long way down. His words to Pete are promising, if a bit too rosy to guarantee longevity: "If I'd met (Megan) first, I'd have known not to throw it away."
- I was especially excited for tonight's episode when I saw who co-wrote it with creator Matthew Weiner. Lending the show some added period authenticity, Frank Pierson - an old hand in Hollywood who co-wrote 1967's "Cool Hand Luke" and directed 1976's "A Star is Born" - was consulting producer on the third season and now this season. "Signal 30" is the 86-year-old's first writing credit on the show. Featuring only a handful of the key players, the John Slattery-directed episode was more slow-paced than usual and another thematically strong entry this season. It's also not every day that fisticuffs enter the ad world.
- Are we getting a follow-up soon on Michael's home life?
- What did everyone take away from the beginning of Ken's story "The Man with the Miniature Orchestra"? More like the guy with the tiniest violin.

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IPhone Failing to Gain Market Share in China as Samsung Lead Triples

IPhone Failing to Gain Market Share in China as Samsung Lead Triples

By Bloomberg News.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) got a second partner in China to sell the iPhone in the world's biggest mobile-phone market. The deal may be too late to catch Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), with a market share that's three times larger and growing.

China Telecom Corp. (728) began selling the iPhone last week as Apple tries to build on its 7.5 percent share of the country's smartphone sales. Samsung controlled 24.3 percent of the market for phones that can play videos and games, according to Gartner Inc., using a strategy of allying with all three of the nation's third-generation networks since such services started in 2009.

Succeeding in China is important for Apple as shipments of smartphones in the country are projected to jump 52 percent this year to 137 million units, overtaking the U.S. for the first time as the world's biggest market. Unlike Samsung's strategy of partnering with all carriers, Apple has limited its own success by not making a device compatible with the nation's biggest operator, China Mobile Ltd. (941)

"I don't expect Apple to replace Samsung any time soon," Gartner analyst Sandy Shen said in an interview. "China Telecom is the nation's smallest carrier, so the extent to which they can help Apple is quite limited."

The 16.8 percentage-point gap in China between Cupertino, California-based Apple and Samsung almost doubled from the third quarter. While Samsung is No. 1 and Apple No. 5 in China, the global story is different: Worldwide, Apple passed its Suwon, South Korea-based competitor to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner.

China Mobile

Apple's partnerships with China's second- and third-largest carriers give it access to about 34 percent of the nation's 988 million mobile users, while Samsung targeted the whole market. iPhones aren't sold to China Mobile's 655 million subscribers, a number almost equal to the combined population of the U.S., Brazil and Mexico.

"Having access to more subscribers gives vendors like Samsung an advantage," said Teck Zhung Wong, a Beijing-based analyst with IDC China, who forecast the 52 percent jump in smartphone sales this year. "If Apple is going to continue to grow in the Chinese market, it has to consider very seriously a handset with China Mobile."

China Telecom had a total of 129.3 million wireless users at the end of January, including 38.7 million 3G subscribers.

Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 in the U.S. exclusively with AT&T Inc. (T) and added a second carrier partner last year in Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)

Pelting Eggs

Apple chose not to make a phone with China Mobile because the operator had a unique 3G standard called TD-SCDMA, even after the Chinese company's Chairman Wang Jianzhou met with the then Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs in early 2010. Wang told the company's annual meeting in May that he didn't expect Apple to introduce an iPhone until the carrier rolled out the fourth- generation TD-LTE network by end of this year.

China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (762) was the nation's first carrier to offer the iPhone with a service contract in October 2009.

Even though Apple trailed Samsung, Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp (000063) in China's smartphone market, people still crave an iPhone.

Apple's oldest store in China was pelted with eggs from a crowd of customers on Jan. 13 when the shop, in Beijing's Sanlitun district, failed to open on the first day of sales for the iPhone 4S. After police sealed off the area to remove more than 500 people, Apple said it would suspend sales of iPhones at all its stores.

'Didn't Bet High Enough'

The maker of iMac computers and iPad tablets underestimated the "staggering" demand for the iPhone 4S when it started sales in China in January, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said. "We thought we were betting bold," Cook said Jan. 24. "We didn't bet high enough."

The iPhone 4S has been "an incredible hit" with customers around the world, Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said in an e-mail. Apple "can't wait to get it into the hands of even more customers in China," Wu said, declining to comment further on the company's handset strategy in China.

Samsung's approach to China is "the same" as other markets, Juha Park, senior vice president of product strategy, said in an interview in Barcelona.

"We make product innovation and make our brand very desired in the market," Park said. "That's what we do to become a major player. We have been doing quite strong growth in the China market."

Unlocked IPhone

Even without an agreement with Apple or a device that's compatible with its high-speed 3G network, China Mobile still has 15 million iPhone users, spokeswoman Rainie Lei said. Those China Mobile users buy unlocked devices and surf the web at slower 2G speeds, or else connect to Wi-Fi hotspots for a faster connection.

China Telecom projects that the iPhone will "significantly enhance its long term sustainable growth and value creation despite the short term pressure on its profitability," spokeswoman Lisa Lai said in an e-mail.

"For China Telecom, its 4S launch comes late and the low- hanging fruit may already be exhausted," said Lisa Soh, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd.

The egg pelting also resulted in Apple losing one advantage it had over Samsung -- its own retail stores stopped selling iPhones. Apple said at the time the move was "for the time being." Apple's Wu said the phones remain available through Apple's online store in China, and declined to provide an update on when the shops would resume sales of the devices.

That leaves Samsung free to further widen its gap.

"It's just one country, but it's such a big market and its portion in the global market is huge, so Samsung is trying to act fast to capture the market," said Kim Young Chan, a Seoul- based analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp. "Dealing with different network standards will give them a pretty valuable competitive edge."

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