Big Apple Silicon Alley Tech Firms in New York City Pressing Outward to Better Priced Real Estate in Midtown Manhattan

The "Big Apple" (New York City) as opposed to the "wee little apple" (somewhere near a place called Cupertino) still sets the trends of the times.

C.J. Hughes has the story for the New York Times in Tech Firms in Manhattan Trade Trendy Lofts for Midtown Bargains.

IFA 2012 in Berlin: Samsung Unveils New Handsets (Galaxy Note 2, Ativ S Windows 8 Phone) at the Consumer Electronics Show

Dan Farber has the story at CNET News
in Samsung's mobile chief JK Shin has a better day in Berlin
writing inter alia
that Samsung is introducing new and innovative products to world markets
at the IFA Consumer Electronics Unlimited trade fair
being held in Berlin August 31 to September 5, 2012.

See e.g. the Galaxy Note 2 "phablet" and the Ativ S Windows 8 Phone.

Samsung has nearly twice the world market share of Apple in smartphones, whereas Apple is still clinging desperately to a massive monopolist-like 60% of the market for tablets:

"For the second quarter of 2012, Samsung had 32.6 percent share of the worldwide market for smartphones, compared with 17 percent in the same quarter a year earlier, according to IDC. Apple had 16.9 percent share, down from 18.8 during that same period. On the iPad front, Samsung and its Android- and Windows 8-powered rivals will have a higher hill to climb. Apple has more than 60 percent of the worldwide market for tablets at this juncture."

It is to be expected that such a 60% market share of tablets will decline steadily if not dramatically in coming years, perhaps not in the USA, where competition is being artificially kept out of the market by last-gasp litigation, but Apple's market share is bound to fall nearly everywhere else as people realize increasingly that they are being offered overhyped and overpriced products "made in Asia", just as the competitors.

Also Samsung's market share is not guaranteed in the future, as they must keep one eye trained behind them at the massive "branded" handset competition starting to coming to the world from China, which has already been making handsets for many foreign companies over the years and which now is flexing its own muscles via the expertise it has acquired and via the necessary raw materials such as rare earths which China has in abundance.

Apple v. Samsung is a Virtual Repeat of Apple v. Microsoft: Rather than Competing Apple is Litigating, Which is a Long-Term "No Win" Strategy

The recent Apple v. Samsung Cupertino trial and the bizarre decision handed down in the case are appropriately commentated by Michael Wolff at the Guardian in the United Kingdom in Apple's rot starts with its Samsung lawsuit win: Just like Microsoft, Apple's evolution from smart tech company to global uber-brand contains the seeds of its own destruction.

As Wolff correctly writes, inter alia:

"Apple came close to destroying its business in the late 1980s by pursuing a suit against Microsoft claiming that Windows infringed the look and feel of the Mac desktop metaphor. Apple focused its hopes and business future on this lawsuit, while its market share dwindled. Rather than competing, it litigated. And lost."

Now Apple is following the same path regarding its current products and the long-term end will be the same as it was with Microsoft, when Apple nearly self-destructed. As Wolff writes:

"[A]nybody with any sense of history know[s] this is going to end badly [for Apple]."

Take a look at Wolff's article to see how this whole terrible patent mess in the USA is viewed overseas.