Snapshot of today

The US Federal Reserve has cut its growth forecast for 2012 from 3.5% to 2.7%, and is still predicting low inflation, but has not reduced interest rates. People who bet that market volatility would reduce after the eurozone agreement have been caught out by Greece’s announcement of a referendum. Now that the referendum has been …

Samsung beats Apple in mobile handsets

Over the last three months Samsung has passed Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones, shipping an estimated 27.8m handsets compared with Apple’s 17.1m (in a total market of around 117m sets). What makes this even more remarkable is that sales have increased four-fold over the past year. How has Samsung been able to do achieve …

Mobile phone operators struggle

Mobile phone operators “around the world” are seeking mergers as a way to share the costs of capital infrastructure expenditure. In the US the number of major groups might reduce to three. In Greece worsening economic conditions mean there may soon be only two mobile operators to choose between. Regulators are trying to stop this …