Apple holds 42% of US market, Samsung 26%

The smartphone adoption in the US market is growing and two companies are coming out the big winners out of it – Apple and Samsung together hold over 60% of the market in the last quarter of last year, up from 52% in the final quarter of 2012.


 


















It's a one sided matchup, however, as Apple alone holds 42% market share, a large increase from the 35% share it had in Q4 2012. Samsung is doing well for itself too, going from 22% in Q4 '12 to 26% in Q4 '13.

 LG saw a small increase in its share but still controls under 10% of the market. The NPD Group, which prepared the market share report, doesn’t go into details of how much this is due to the company's Nexus involvement (LG build both the Nexus 4 and 5).
While the Google-branded Nexus may have helped LG, the Google ownership of Motorola did not and the company went from over 10% market share to about equal with LG. All other companies declined.
HTC experienced a sharp drop in a year, though not as sharp as BlackBerry, which got its share almost completely evaporated. Even the makers collectively market as "Other" in the report have declined, which points to a homogenization of the market – Apple in front, with Samsung as a distant second.
What US users do with all those smartphones is use more and more data apparently. The average data usage per month went up to 6.6GB (from 5.5GB in Q4 2012). Half of smartphone owners now use some form of music streaming (up from around 40%).

MAY DAY PROTESTS

 In JAKARTA, Indonesia Tens of thousands of low-paid workers took to the streets on May Day to demand higher wages, better benefits and improved working conditions a week after a building collapse in Bangladesh became a grim reminder of the dangers of lax safety regulations in poor countries.

Laborers in Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines and elsewhere marched and chanted en masse Wednesday, sounding complaints about being squeezed by big business amid the surging cost of living. Asia is the manufacturing ground for many of the world's largest multinational companies.

Thousands of garment factory workers in Bangladesh also paraded through the streets calling for work safeguards and for the owner of the collapsed building to be sentenced to death.

In Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, tens of thousands of workers rallied for higher pay and an end to the practice of outsourcing jobs to contract workers, among other demands. Some also carried banners reading: "Sentence corruptors to death and seize their properties" and protested against a proposed plan for the government to slash fuel subsidies that have kept the country's pump prices among the cheapest in the region.

"It seems that the government is so stupid," said a protester who identified himself only as Sarwan. "They don't know, every time they talk fuel price increase, it will bring up the prices of other goods."

A day earlier, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the country must reduce fuel subsidies that are a major drain on the budget. In 2011, the subsidy bill ran close to $20 billion, the same amount targeted for spending on infrastructure this year. The government is now trying to help offset the fuel increase among the poor who would be most affected by it.

American Airlines Halt Due To Computer problem.

American Airlines was Halted for several hours on Tuesday after a nationwide problem with its computer systems. Late afternoon, its computers were back up and its operation were slowly coming back to life.

More than 400 flights were canceled and scores more were delayed due to system wide problem that started around midday and lasted until around 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. Still, the airline said it expected cancellations and delays to last through the rest of Tuesday as it tried to restore a normal schedule. 

American said the problem was caused by an inability to gain access to its reservations system, called Sabre. The electronic system, often described as the brains of an airline, is responsible for bookings and reservations, but also manages a wide variety of functions related to flights, including printing boarding passes, online check-ins, ticketing, and tracking bag.

OBLIVION by Tom Cruise (Reviews)

Film review: Lovely view, but haven't you and I already met on another planet?

 

• Twelve years ago, Cameron Crowe took an offbeat Spanish psychodrama, Open Your Eyes, and remade it as Vanilla Sky, a big and glossy Tom Cruise vehicle. Oblivion has a similar feel. It's not a remake of a specific film (although some might disagree – more on that later), but it does come across as a brain-teasing indie oddity that's been super-sized by Cruise's involvement.

• It's set on a devastated future Earth. The aliens who did the devastating, the Scavengers, were routed, but they left the planet in such a post-apocalyptic mess that the human race cut its losses and moved to a colony on one of Saturn's moons. Cruise plays Jack Harper (just three months after he played Jack Reacher), one of the few people remaining on Earth. His job is to repair the heavily armed metal spheres (anyone else remember Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks?) which zoom around our poor irradiated world, picking off any lurking Scavengers. Every evening he reports back to the chic, minimalist headquarters he shares with his girlfriend, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). And she in turn gets her orders from the icily genial Sally (Melissa Leo), who oversees their operation from an orbiting pyramidal mothership. But then another spacecraft crash lands nearby. One of its surviving passengers is a woman (Olga Kurylenko) Jack recognises from his dreams. Could there be something about his past – and the past of the whole planet – that Sally hasn't told him?

• This, you might think, is pretty epic stuff, what with its aliens and spaceships and its fate-of-humanity story. And in a way it is. I saw Oblivion on an Imax screen and it looked phenomenal, from the peerless CGI, to the black-sanded canyons of Iceland, where it was filmed, to the pristine technology that might have been styled by Apple. It's directed by Joseph Kosinski, who made TRON: Legacy, and no one fashions sci-fi films that are more lustrously beautiful.

• But in other ways, Oblivion is a small-scale drama. There are just six speaking parts in total, and the first hour consists of Cruise and Riseborough getting on with their maintenance job, with nary a suspicion that things aren't what they seem. Oblivion has less in common with Star Wars, then, than with the thoughtful pre-Star Wars science fiction of Silent Running and Solaris. But it has even more in common with a recent cult favourite which those films inspired, Duncan Jones's Moon. I'm not saying that Oblivion is a refashioning of Moon, of course ... but some people might.

 

PSY "Gentleman' Music Video"

Watch the Follow-Up Visual to'Gangnam Style'

 

 

Gentleman By PSY

 

After the great success of PSY 'Gangnam Style'

Watch it out now.....

   

The love for PSY's "Gangnam Style" certainly hasn't slowed with the horsey dance video currently at over 1.5 billion views on YouTube. Its follow-up gives viewers more of what they want: crazy PSY! The music video for "Gentleman," released Saturday morning (April 13), follows a similar style to "Gangnam" and its much-loved antics.

Honda Amaze Reviews

•   The Honda Amaze sedan is the new sub-four meter entrant for the Indian market. More importantly it is the first diesel vehicle from Honda India. The Amaze competes directly with the Maruti Suzuki Dzire on pricing and might seriously dent latter’s market share.

• The Amaze is basically a sedan version of the Brio, but looks proportionate, unlike few of its competitors. There are some changes to the exteriors when comparison with the Brio – the roofline and creases on the side are different, so are the wheels. At the rear the tail-lamps are reminiscent of the City’s, and there is a large chrome strip that runs across the boot in much the way the Dzire and Scala have. The important bit is that the Amaze refuses to look boring, whether you like the way it looks or not.

• The interiors of the Amaze are similar to that of the other Honda models and very closely resemble trims of the Brio. However, the features are a premium when compared to the hatchback – for example, the audio system on the car is from the Honda City with steering mounted audio controls for the top-end versions. The wheelbase has been increased to 2405mm; apart from improving the driving dynamics it also increase the rear legroom. The 400-litre boot of the Amaze is largest in the segment – it is quite commendable considering the car is under four-meters in length. The only complaint that we have about the interiors is that the rear-seats don’t split or fold.

• The Honda Amaze petrol is powered by refined 1.2-litre i-VTEC producing 88PS and 109Nm of torque – the same unit that powers the Brio, with the ARAI fuel economy of 18kpl. The sub-four meter sedan also gets a 5-speed automatic petrol variant with ARAI fuel efficiency of 15kpl.

• The Honda Amaze diesel sedan is powered by a turbocharged 1.5-litre i-DTEC oil burner that produces 100PS@3600rpm and 200Nm of torque@1750rpm of which the latter is completely flat and does not drop until we get near the redline.  The diesel versions have ARAI fuel efficiency of 25.8kpl – the highest for any vehicle in India. ABS with EBD is standard across the diesel and automatic variants.

• Honda is spot-on with the prices – the Amaze goes head-to-head with the Dzire variants. In fact as an overall package is probably a notch ahead of the Dzire with better power ratings, more space and higher ARAI fuel efficiency figures.

The Amaze will be offered to buyers in both petrol and diesel models, with a choice of four variants to pick from in each model. Automatic Transmission will only be extended to buyers who opt for the petrol model.

Human Tellers Inside ATMs in America

Bank of America is adding a new feature to its automated teller machines: actual human tellers.

Bank of America Puts Human Tellers Inside ATMs

The company announced Thursday morning that it will start rolling out new ATMs with Teller Assist, a feature that allows customers to live video chat with a remote teller. Customers using the new ATMs will be able to call the remote teller for services that a machine is unable to provide. That includes cashing checks for their exact amount (including change) and getting a withdrawal in smaller denominations than the usual $20 bills. Bank of America is also planning to offer the option of paying your credit card bill from the ATM, as well as splitting a deposit across multiple accounts.

The feature, available in both English and Spanish, will be most useful for customers using ATMs during hours when the bank is closed.
That said, video chat will be available from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, which means that you can also use it when the bank is open and you don't feel like waiting in line to speak with a teller. And of course, it will also be a big help for customers using ATMs that aren't attached to a bank -- the company says that the new feature will be available at drive-up locations and standalone ATMs.

The program is starting at a single Bank of America location in Boston, but will roll out at other locations across America over the course of the year.