Samsung was ambushing Apple at a temporary “pop up” store offering its new Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone for just A$2 to the first 10 customers each day in the run-up to the rival iPhone launch.The guerrilla marketing tactic is the latest flare-up in the intensifying competition between two of the biggest players in the mobile devices industry that has also seen them battle in courts across the world over patents.What makes the battle so captivating is that the two companies are such contrasts. Apple is known for innovation and big ideas that create whole new markets. What Samsung lacks in ideas, it makes up for with a sleek production system that is lightning fast in bringing new products to market.Still, Samsung Electronics delayed the unveiling of its latest smartphone, the Nexus Prime, by a week to Wednesday as a sign of respect following the death of Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs — Apple is Samsung’s biggest customers for microprocessors.The Nexus Prime has been much anticipated because it is based on the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, named “Ice Cream Sandwich” after previous versions also named after foods, such as Gingerbread and Honeycomb.But the war for smartphone dominance is one Samsung appears to be winning for now, just. Third-quarter figures are expected to show it has overtaken Apple as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in terms of units sold.Apple, the world’s largest technology company with a market value of $391 billion, is counter-punching hard as the holiday sales season approaches.It is expected to present a positive short-term picture — sparked by roaring sales of its iPhone and iPad — when it reports results for the July-September period on Tuesday. The company moved 4 million iPhone 4S units in three days — more than double its predecessor — despite lukewarm reviews.”The quarter we are focusing on is the holiday quarter,” said Channing Smith, co-manager of the Capital Advisors Growth Fund, which owns Apple shares. “We expect Apple to absolutely blow the doors off during Christmas.”The battle between Samsung and Apple is being waged not just in malls and stalls across the world, but in courtrooms as well.On the same day Samsung was luring away potential Apple customers in Sydney with the Galaxy promotion, an Australian court slapped a temporary ban on the sale of Samsung’s computer tablet, named the Galaxy Tab, in the country, saying Samsung infringed on Apple patents.Apple has also scored preliminary injunctions against some Samsung products in Germany and the Netherlands, and seeks to block sales of Samsung models in the United States, the key smartphone battleground.Samsung is trying to counter with lawsuits of its own, unsuccessfully so far, accusing Apple of infringing its technologies.FAST EXECUTIONERAnalysts who follow the company say Samsung may not have the next big idea but it does have world-class marketing chops.The world’s biggest maker of flat screens and memory chips and the second-biggest mobile phone maker after Nokia can bring a product to market faster than anybody. Samsung can leverage costs by using the chips and screens from its other divisions in its products. It has unrivalled product differentiation, offering different phones for different market segments.But while Samsung has shown it can beat Apple in the market, few are convinced it has the innovative corporate culture to be the next Apple.The conglomerate’s legendary founder Lee Byung-chull set up Samsung Electronics in 1969, producing black-and-white TVs that he supposedly learned how to make by tearing apart a Sony. Apple claims in its lawsuits that the Galaxy lineups using Google’s Android platform copied the look and feel of its iPhone and iPad.”Koreans are great at reverse engineering,” says John Strand, founder of Danish telecoms consultancy Strand Consult.Samsung’s corporate culture values speed and adaptability, aspiring to be what they call in Korea the “fast executioner.”“But to capture the imagination of the public in the way the iPhone or iPad have done, Samsung will need to take risks and produce something unique that has a true ‘wow’ factor and be first to market,” said Tim Shepherd, an analyst at Canalys, a technology focused research firm.TECHNOLOGY AGNOSTICSamsung doesn’t just rely on Android. It is technology neutral, jointly developing software with Intel, using Microsoft’s Windows, free software Linux and its own operating system, Bada, in its phones. Its vertically integrated supply chain of chips and displays also helps it better control production costs.”With eggs in all baskets, Samsung is poised to be the long-term winner regardless of how the dynamics play out between technologies and standards,” analysts at Bernstein said in a report. “Samsung is unique among leading manufacturers of being extremely ‘OS-agnostic’,” they said referring to operating systems.One Samsung executive helpfully suggested that Apple might want to copy the Korean company.”What Apple might want to pursue is ironically what Samsung is doing right now: Keep introducing differentiated products to cater to the very low end of the market to the very top,” said a senior Samsung official, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.”We may have looked foolish by not focusing on just one mobile platform and instead spreading our resources for the time- and labor-consuming work of making phones with various platforms, but it showed patience eventually pays off.”Samsung’s speedy ascent to the smartphone summit came after the company was sent reeling by the storm Apple created over the launch of the iPhone 4 and the iPad early last year. Profit halved in the second quarter last year because it didn’t have products to compete with the iPhone 4 and the iPad.But it caught up fast. Samsung released an upgraded version of its Galaxy S smartphone with improved processing power in April, less than a year after it was first introduced, making it also bigger but lighter. Months later, it unveiled upgraded versions of the Galaxy smartphone, running on the fast 4G network with a high-resolution display.The company was also first to challenge the iPad with different sizes and is now the No. 2 tablet vendor.Samsung sold nearly 20 million smartphones in the second quarter, about one million fewer than Apple. Its market share gap was less than 1 percentage point.But Samsung is expected to sell 95 million smartphones this year, higher than Apple’s 81 million, and raise sales to 136 million versus Apple’s 89 million units next year, JPMorgan analysts forecast.By comparison, Apple’s latest iPhone followed 15 months after its previous model and had no facial changes, disappointing investors and fans who had hoped for a fancy and thinner product with a bigger screen and 4G connection.”If users are concerned about being ‘future-proof’ from a network technology point of view, Samsung clearly has a marketing edge at the moment … Samsung has a strong ability to release competitive new smartphones on a timely basis,” Fitch analyst Alvin Lim said.CLEAN, CLEAR, COLOURSJust listen to Michael Santos, an iPhone user for the last two years. The 22-year-old is about to abandon his iPhone after spending the past half-hour in a Samsung store in Singapore playing with the new Galaxy S II.”The screen on the Galaxy is high resolution, much clearer, cleaner and the colors are brighter,” said Santos, a student on a holiday in Singapore.The Galaxy S II uses Samsung’s own dual-core application processors, cutting costs there. It is slimmer and has a bigger display than the iPhone 4S and is being sold through around 140 operators in more than 100 countries.Choice, and lots of it, has been key to its success.”The secret to Samsung’s success is strength in depth,” said Geoff Blaber, analyst at London-based mobile consultancy CCS Insight. “Samsung is competing aggressively — from pre-pay right up to the high-tier, where the Galaxy S II has arguably gained most from Nokia’s slide in market share.”“Words once solely used to describe Nokia are now applicable to Samsung. Scale, distribution and supply chain are interdependent elements that Samsung has mastered to drive both profit and volume,” he said.Analysts say smartphones now account for one-third of Samsung’s handset portfolio, up from 26 percent in the second quarter and 12 percent a year ago, lifting the profit margin of its overall handset business to around 14 percent.The iPhone, introduced in 2007 with the touchscreen template now adopted by its rivals, is still the gold standard in the smartphone market.But phones based on Android, which is available for free to handset vendors such as Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola Mobility and Sony Ericsson, have come to dominate the market.Consumers of Android-powered smartphones tout its customization, price and also the fact that they do not need to synchronize their devices with a computer like users of Apple’soperating system.Samsung may not have come up with the concept but it has adapted Apple’s breakthrough smartphone idea perhaps better than any other handset maker. It tries to offer the Apple experience at a better price with better functionality.That was why Cho Su-ah, a college student in Seoul, picked Samsung over Apple.”I was attracted to the iPhone 4 more since many of my friends have it and I could get a lot of help from them if I needed. Also, as a girl, I was attracted to the cute design of Apple,” she said.”But my thoughts on Galaxy changed after a few days of using it. Since it’s a Korean phone I could get technical help much more easily than I would have with an iPhone. And although people said the Android market has fewer applications, I didn’t have any trouble finding applications I wanted.”

But he added that he expected existing governance rules would be applied much more rigorously in the future, even without a change in the treaty.All advanced economies were being affected by a crisis at the moment but Europe’s particular problem was that some countries had not respected treaty rules, Trichet said.”We don’t have a federal budget, we don’t have a political federation so we have to fully respect the constraints and the mutual supervision rules that exist in the euro zone,” he said.

* French banks hit by renewed worries over Italy, GreeceBy Blaise RobinsonPARIS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - European stocks were lower around midday Thursday, as the region’s benchmark indexes ran into strong resistance levels following a steep one-week rally, while weakening Chinese trade data stoke worries over the outlook of the global economy.European Central Bank comment about the impact on the euro and the region’s banks of involving bondholders in euro zone bailouts also hit sentiment.The ECB said forcing private bondholders to accept losses on euro zone sovereign debt could damage the currency’s reputation.”It is not really new, but it highlights the divergences between governments and the ECB that may hold up bank recapitalisation plans,” a Paris-based trader said.At 1135 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 1 percent at 967.03 points, following a 12 percent rise in a week.The index inched higher earlier in the session but ran into strong resistance at 983.4 points, which represents the mid-point of the nosedive from late-July to late-September.Cyclical shares such as heavyweight miners dropped, with Xstrata down 4.3 percent and Antofagasta down 4.9 percent after data showed China’s trade surplus narrowed for a second straight month in September with both imports and exports lower than expected.FRENCH BANKING STOCKS UNDER RENEWED PRESSUREInvestors’ focus was also on the results of Italy’s debt auction, at which the yield on the 5-year BTP bonds fell to 5.32 percent from 5.6 percent a month ago, but it failed to reassure investors over the country’s finances.French banks, among the biggest holders of Italian debt, were taking a hit, with BNP Paribas down 7.7 percent and Societe Generale down 4.7 percent, while Italian lender UniCredit fell 5.5 percent.Adding to the jitters on French banking stocks, a French finance ministry source told Reuters that France believes losses for private investors in Greek debt in a second financing package for Athens will be above the 21 percent initially agreed.”It’s all about investors’ psychology and not facts at the moment. The excessive euphoria in the past week’s rally is similar to the excessive panic during the summer,” said David Thebault, head of quantitative sales trading at Global Equities in Paris.”At this point, we have taken profits off the table, and we play very short-term moves using leveraged equity options, but that’s it for now. We should get better entry points for stocks later on,” he said.The euro zone’s blue chip Euro STOXX 50 index was down 1.4 percent at 2,338.29 points, after briefly crossing above the 50 percent retracement of the slump of the past few months, a key resistance level.The index, in a downward mood since the first quarter, was also testing the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of the fall from the year’s high in mid-February, a longer-term resistance level.”The pros and cons of the immediate pursuit of the recent trend are fairly balanced. We have no ‘sell’ signal, but the resistance reached are important levels,” said Valerie Gastaldy, head of Paris-based technical analysis firm Day By Day.Around Europe, the UK’s FTSE 100 index was down 0.9 percent, Germany’s DAX index down 1.2 percent, and France’s CAC 40 down 1.1 percent.Italian utility major Enel fell 3.3 percent on fears over the group’s dividend after Chief Executive Fulvio Conti told Bloomberg in an interview that its dividend was under review because of a one-off tax.A spokesman for the company said the dividend policy remained unchanged, though the full-year dividend could be affected by the one-off energy tax introduced earlier this year.”This is a big reminder that dividends in the sector are under increasing pressure. Better switch to telcos if you want to play the dividend theme,” a Paris-based trader said.E.ON was down 3.4 percent and EDF down 1.1 percent.

By Kate HoltonLONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Two of the most influential media figures in Britain on Wednesday accused the government of using a scandal over journalists hacking phones as an excuse to clamp down on the press and prevent it from probing the misdeeds of the powerful.Showing much of the anger often evident in his right-leaning mid-market tabloid, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre said the calls for a clampdown on the industry were being led by a government that had until recently indulged in “sickening genuflections” before Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.”Am I alone in detecting the rank smells of hypocrisy and revenge in the political class’s current moral indignation over a British press that dared to expose their greed and corruption,” he told an inquiry into press standards called by the government after the scandal.Britain’s highly competitive press is under intense scrutiny in the wake of revelations that people working for Murdoch’s hugely popular News of the World tabloid had hacked the phones of thousands to generate stories.The scandal caused a wave of public anger which ultimately brought about the closure of the tabloid and shook the political establishment. Prime Minister David Cameron was also damaged by his decision to hire former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief in 2007.Kelvin MacKenzie, a long-time former editor of Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, said the press did not need further regulation and said the “ludicrous” inquiry was a mere smokescreen to hide Cameron’s embarrassment over his failings.”This is the way in which our prime minister is hopeful he can escape his own personal lack of judgment,” he said in a typically aggressive speech, while relaying how Cameron’s politicians used to line up to “kiss the rear end” of Murdoch.He said politicians should accept the scandal was simply a moment “when low-grade criminality took over a newspaper,” and not an indication of a need for widespread change.MacKenzie said former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown had once threatened to “destroy” Murdoch and his News Corp company after the Sun called for its readers to back Cameron over Brown in the 2010 election.Dacre said he condemned the hacking but thought the politicians were now going too far in their reaction.”Let’s keep it in proportion,” he said. “Britain’s cities weren’t looted as a result. No one died. The banks didn’t collapse because of the News of the World.”Parliament’s response to the scandal, Dacre said, was “a judicial inquiry with greater powers than those possessed by the public inquiry into the Iraq war” with a panel of experts “who have not the faintest clue on how mass-selling newspapers operate.”THE ‘LIBERAL’ PROBLEMDacre’s anger was directed across the board, at the police, judges, the Prime Minister and also the left-leaning Guardian newspaper which led much of the coverage that eventually brought down the News of the World.Dacre questioned whether “liberals” should be allowed to decide what a working class man or woman reads.”The problem is that Britain’s liberal class, the people that know best and really run this country, by and large hate all popular press,” he said.”The Hampstead liberal with his gilded lifestyle understandably enjoys the Guardian. But does he have any right to deny someone who works 10 hours a day … and lives for football, the right to buy a paper that reveals the sexual peccadilloes of one of his team’s millionaire married players?”Dacre, who wields huge political influence through a newspaper that often claims to lead the charge against moral decay, also suggested that the more scandalous elements of newspapers were required to draw readers in, allowing the press to then fund coverage of more serious matters such as politics.Like MacKenzie, Dacre said the current system of self regulation led by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was adequate but he said it could be beefed up with the appointment of an ombudsman with the power to impose fines.Another speaker to support the press was Mary-Ellen Field, an Australian hacking victim who lost her job working for the model Elle Macpherson, because Macpherson thought Field had leaked private information to the press.”I don’t want the press muzzled,” she said. “I want to see you doing your job and that’s to be vigilant and to protect democracy. I was not a victim of the freedom of the press … or self regulation. I was a victim of criminal behaviour.”

($1 = 1.004 Australian Dollars)