Samsung tops 2011 smartphone shipments

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhuanet) – A pair of rivals come to mind when discussing the hottest smartphones in the world: Apple and Samsung. iPhone devotees are already buzzing about a 5th edition, rumoured to ship this summer, but Samsung is creating excitement as well with its new line-up of smartphones set to hit the market in May.

The South Korean company beat Apple in terms of smartphone shipments last year, and has so successfully turned itself into a phone-centric firm, that you’d be forgiven for forgetting that it once sold TVs and home appliances.

This is probably your smartphone. Or that one. Or maybe this one.

The point is, statistically speaking, it’s likely to be a Samsung.

The tech giant catapulted to top spot in global smart phone shipments last year, and its trajectory remains up and away.

Analyst estimates see first quarter shipments rising some 20%, in the ballpark of 44 million handsets.

Yes, 44 million smart phones sold in just three months.

Top analysts surveyed by StarMine suggest operating profit outperforming the consensus estimates, coming in near 4.5 billion U.S. dollars.

Investors have rewarded the firm for its success. It’s shares are up some 35 percent in the last 12 months.

Among its rivals, topped only by Apple.

CLSA’s forecasts suggests the mobile unit is likely to account for some 70 percent of operating profit this quarter.

In other words, Samsung is increasingly a phone-centric firm.

That’s part of the reason the firm has just earmarked seven billion dollars for a new semiconductor factory in central China. That will build memory chips for mobile devices.

The good news for investors - it’s the more expensive phones that are selling.

Take the Galaxy SII - a big, powerful and expensive beast. It’s flown off the shelves faster than any smartphone in the firm’s history.

And this trend should translate into higher margins.

Actual earnings will come out near the end of April, but shouldn’t prove too different from official guidance and street estimates.

So what’s ahead for Samsung?

According to the internet, the Galaxy SIII.

This supposed image was leaked on social website reddit, with a due date of May 22.

And if sales of this new puppy are anything like the SII -- Samsung could be set for yet another blockbuster quarter.

(Source: CNTV)

Dow ends below 13,000 amid weak payroll data

NEW YORK, April 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S stocks slipped broadly on Monday as investors were disappointed on non-farm payrolls, whose growth failed to hit 200,000 for the first time since November.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 130.55 points, or 1.00 percent, at 12,929.59, which was the first time in a month for the blue-chip average to settle below the psychological level of 13, 000.

The Standard & Poor's 500 was down 15.88 points, or 1.14 percent, to 1,382.20, and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 33.42 points, or 1.08 percent, to 3,047.08.

The payroll data disappointed investors on Monday as the economy added fewer jobs than expected. According to the Labor Department, non-farm payrolls rose by 120,000 in March, failing to reach the 200,000 level for the first time since November 2011. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent from 8.3 percent in the previous month, beating expectations of an unchanged reading and marking the lowest rate seen since January 2009. Although the unemployment slipped a little bit lower, many investors, however, believed that the decline was not because the job market was getting better, but rather because more people gave up searching for jobs.

Moreover, the disappointing data raised investors' expectations of further monetary easing measures by the Federal Reserve.

As for overseas data, China's consumer prices climbed 3.6 percent in March, exceeding the 3.3 percent increase estimated. The potential inflation risk dampened investors' expectations of further easing policies by China's central bank and raised risk- aversion appetite.

As for oil, crude prices fell on Monday as U.S. disappointing job data released on Friday caused recovery concerns and Iran agreed to resume talks with the West.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery slipped 85 cents, or 0.82 percent to settle at 102.46 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, the oil market was closed on Monday. Brent crude for May delivery dropped 76 cents to 122.67 dollars a barrel in electronic trade.

The U.S. dollar fell against major currencies in late New York trading on Monday after data showed that U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected in March. The dollar index lost 0.13 percent to 79.74.

Facebook to acquire photo-sharing Instagram for 1 bln dollars

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Facebook announced on Monday that it will acquire popular photo-sharing app maker Instagram for about 1 billion U.S. dollars.

According to the company's press release, the acquisition is " approximately 1 billion dollars in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook," and is expected to close later this quarter.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer and founder Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a Facebook blog post which has had more than 80,000 "likes."

In the blog, Zuckerberg noted Instagram will remain independent while working closely with Facebook to offer best sharing experience for users. "We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram' s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That's why we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently," said Zuckerberg in the blog. "This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan do any more of these, if any at all," he noted

With only nine employees, the San Francisco-based Instagram has 27 million registered users on Apple's iOS devices alone. Last week, it launched the Android version, racking up more than 1 million users within 24 hours.

Last week, it was reported that Instagram has been valued at 500 million dollars by investors. Both Google and Facebook have been reportedly reaching the start-up several times for last 18 months.

Facebook is expected hold an initial public offering next month which could value the company at 100 billion dollars.

Pew: Plurality of GOP voters want an end to the primary process

Is it time to call the game?  According to a new survey from Pew, almost half of all Republicans think the ongoing primaries are hurting the party, while a far larger percentage believe that Mitt Romney has become the inevitable nominee:

    Following primary victories in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia last Tuesday, Mitt Romney is clearly seen as the inevitable GOP nominee, and Republicans now see continued primaries as bad for the party.

    In the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted April 5-8, 2012, roughly three-quarters (74%) of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say that Romney will definitely be the Republican Party’s nominee this fall. Only 21% believe a candidate other than Romney still has a chance to become the party’s nominee.

    And Republicans’ appetite for the ongoing primary campaign has soured. By a 47% to 36% margin, more say it is a bad for the party, not good, that the nomination race has not yet been decided and is still going on. Just a month ago, Republicans were split on this question, and as recently as February a majority thought it was a good thing for the party that the nomination had not yet been finalized.

I suspect that this poll will get a lot of attention today, now that Rick Santorum has returned to the campaign trail, but a few caveats are in order.  The poll sample in this case was 295 self-identifying Republican or GOP-leaning registered voters.  That’s not an especially large sample for a national poll, which is why Pew has a 7% margin of error on the results.  Technically speaking, that puts the “appetite” question on the outer edges of a virtual tie.

Furthermore, Pew doesn’t give any details about the location of these voters — and that might be a wee bit important in determining why they believe that further competition is more harmful than useful at this point.  It obviously doesn’t relate to the conclusions about the likelihood of Romney winning the nomination; nearly three in four say he’s all but wrapped it up, but less than half think it’s time to end the process.  How many of these respondents live in states that have already had their nomination contests, and how many would still like to cast a meaningful vote in the primaries?  I suspect that there would be a wide, wide divergence of polling results between Florida and Pennsylvania, or Michigan and Texas, for instance.  In a sample of less than 300 registered voters nationwide, the location of these respondents makes a bigger difference to the overall results for this kind of question.

The only interesting takeaway from this survey is that a large number of people who believe Romney has all but won the nomination still want to see more debate.  Romney still needs to close the deal with the base, but the numbers will encourage Romney’s competitors to make him keep working for that resolution.

Video: Hey, who wants to cast Eric Holder’s ballot?

In case you missed it at Breitbart.com this morning, an ingenious stunt from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Note that there’s no actual fraud committed here. There could have been if the impersonator had followed through, but when it came time to sign Holder’s name in the registrar’s book, that was his cue to bail out in the guise of going back to the car to get his ID — which, of course, the registrar helpfully reminded him that he didn’t need. An unnamed federal official confirmed for NBC News that there’s no illegality unless and until someone else’s name is signed to obtain the ballot, so bear that in mind for when the inevitable “prosecute O’Keefe” screeching begins.

New York mag argues that there probably aren’t many cases of impostors taking the time to research another person’s name and address and then risking prison to obtain a ballot fraudulently. Maybe not, but I don’t think O’Keefe is claiming otherwise. The point is to show, in the most vividly ridiculous way possible, how a mundane practice and mainstay of American life like presenting photo ID magically disappears in the context of elections. There are, after all, potential solutions to the problems of voters without ID that don’t require stupidly handing over a ballot in someone else’s name on the say-so of the person requesting it. Exit quotation from a whiny DOJ official: “It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones.”

Jay Carney on Obama’s Court remarks: It’s the “reverse of intimidation”

Well, no, it’s not the reverse of it. But if O really thinks he can strong-arm Anthony Kennedy and/or John Roberts by lying publicly about how allegedly unprecedented striking down the law would be — a claim even his legal mentor, Laurence Tribe, admitted was a misstatement — then I’m guessing he’s in for an even bigger disappointment than he’s expecting. If FDR couldn’t get away with over-the-top Supreme Court demagoguery, O certainly can’t. Especially when a majority of the public thinks the mandate, which is at the heart of this constitutional question, stinks on ice.

James Taranto has this exactly right, I believe:

One theory is that he’s trying to intimidate the justices into deciding the case his way. But if that’s his aim, it would be odd to wait until after they’ve heard the case–and, it is believed, after they’ve privately voted on it–to begin the campaign. Moreover, while we’d say a politician’s trash talk is unlikely to have any effect on the justices at all, the odds that it would influence them in his favor are surely minuscule. Judges jealously guard their independence, as the Fifth Circuit demonstrated yesterday. They’re right to do so…

As we noted in our August essay, “Everyone loves a winner, and progressives are angry and disconsolate with Mr. Obama because they increasingly see him as a loser.” If the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, Obama will be a loser again. If he shows what normal people regard as due deference to a coequal branch of government, the Angry Left will see him as a weak loser and may turn their anger against him…

If this theory is right, then Obama is attacking the Supreme Court in order to deflect the rage of his own followers. He has a problem with his base, all right, and he wants to turn it into someone else’s problem.

His problems are always someone else’s problems, huh? But yeah, I think Taranto’s right: Obama’s top priority now, as always, is reelection, and scapegoating the Supremes can potentially help with that. The core of his campaign message is fairness, which is why he spends so much time blathering about a penny-ante gimmick like the Buffett Rule. Even if it won’t make a dent in the deficit, it’s a good way to get his base angry and motivated. Same here if the Court strikes down O-Care. He wants non-lawyers to believe that somehow a constitutional novelty like the mandate should be a slam dunk; that was the point of stressing on Monday how allegedly “unprecedented” it’d be to get rid of it. If it happens anyway, he can point to it as further evidence that the game is rigged by these darned wingnuts against “progress” and therefore the left has no choice but to turn out en masse and give him a few more Supreme Court appointments. He can’t intimidate Anthony Kennedy, but just maybe he’ll get to name his replacement. That’s the point of all this.

Anyway. Now that O achieved what he set out to do, both Carney and Eric Holder are free to admit that yes, of course, the White House and DOJ accept the principle of judicial review. Two clips for you here, one of Carney on the “reverse of intimidation” (click the image to watch) and the second via The Hill of Norah O’Donnell and Ed Henry reminding him that no, in fact, it’s not correct to say that the Court hasn’t overturned any statutes passed under the Commerce Clause over the past 80 years. Carney tries to clarify that. Emphasis on “tries.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/04/jay-carney-on-obamas-court-remarks-its-the-reverse-of-intimidation/

Sad video confirmation: Obama’s speechwriters just phoning it in now

Paul Ryan told ABC yesterday when they asked him about O’s latest smear job that he’s “become accustomed to this kind of rhetoric from the president,” but wait until you see this. He didn’t know the half of it. Look at it this way, though: There are only so many ways to accuse House Republicans of hating sick people and disabled kids. If you’ve got a paragraph on point, why not just copy/paste that sucker in there and check the “Paul Ryan wants to kill grandma” box? Obama himself has obviously stopped paying attention to his own demagoguery or else he would have caught this recycling in draft and demanded a rewrite. The media apparently isn’t paying much attention either because this clip from the RNC oppo team is the first we’ve heard of O’s repetition.

Maybe he’s been giving the same three speeches since 2009 and nobody’s noticed because we’ve all tuned him out. Time to start running the transcripts through one of those draft-comparison software programs. Just from memory, I recall roughly eight thousand separate iterations of “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Which, as it turns out, you can’t.

Law professor: Impeach Supremes if they overturn Obamacare

Like conservatives, law professor David R. Dow thinks it’s disappointing that the Supreme Court vote on the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual mandate will likely fall along partisan lines — but his disappointment stems from his utter conviction that the individual mandate is constitutional.

He’s so convinced of it that he thinks any Supreme Court justice who votes to overturn Obamacare should be impeached. He cites Thomas Jefferson’s call to impeach Justice Samuel Chase as an historical reminder that impeachment is and should be an option for justices who undermine constitutional values. I agree with him that impeachment of justices is itself constitutional — but what constitutional principles, exactly, would the Supreme Court be undermining if they vote against Obamacare?

Dow’s argument that the individual mandate is constitutional is exactly what you would expect: If you are going to voluntarily do something (e.g. drive a car), the government can make you purchase a product (e.g. insurance) provided it has a good reason for doing so (e.g. making sure you can pay for any damage you do). This argument might make some sense if the activity for which Obamacare mandates insurance was something more than merely existing.

But Dow takes it a step further by arguing that the Constitution doesn’t just grant the federal government the power to regulate commerce, but that it also, in fact, grants the federal government the power to guarantee medical coverage for the poor and to implement a system to pay for it. He writes:

    [C]ritics of the health-care law say the only reason the rest of us have to pay for medical services used by people who have no money is that laws require hospitals to treat people who come in for emergencies regardless of their ability to pay. In other words, the critics say, the only reason there is a social cost—the only reason the syllogism works—is because of the underlying laws requiring hospitals to treat the poor.

    Unlike silly examples involving broccoli and cell phones, that so-called “bootstrap” argument is sound. But here the critics drop their ideological mask as surely as the court dropped it in the Gonzales ruling. Their argument can be restated thusly: if you repeal laws requiring hospitals to treat the poor, you eliminate the constitutional basis for mandatory insurance coverage.

    You don’t have to pull the analytical thread of that reasoning very hard to see that it boils down to an argument for allowing the poor to die. And if the Supreme Court strikes down the health-care law, that is exactly the ideology it will have to embrace. It will be saying that Congress cannot guarantee medical coverage for the poor and then implement a system to pay for it. In other words, the only people entitled to health care are the people who can afford it.

    The last time the court went down this path, saner heads prevailed. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s view was historically and constitutionally correct, and the court finally acknowledged this in a pivotal 1937 case, West Coast Hotel v. Parish. In West Coast Hotel, the court ruled that the Constitution safeguards not just individual liberty but community interests as well; and in matters of economics, it is the legislature’s job to strike the appropriate balance between those two. If the Roberts Court overturns the Affordable Care Act, it will be mimicking the discredited court of 1935.

All of this completely ignores that ours is a federalist government, with the powers not expressly granted to the federal government reserved to the states. Nobody has ever argued that the institutional mandate is unconstitutional at the state level — noxious to freedom-loving Americans, perhaps, but not unconstitutional. Ann Coulter famously pointed that out in her eye-opening article, “Three Cheers for Romneycare!” So, Dow might be right that that the Constitution provides government with the power to guarantee medical coverage and to implement a system to pay for it — but that power would exist at the state level. Nowhere does the Constitution enumerate that as a power of the federal government — and the Constitution clearly reserves unenumerated powers to the states.

Just as Obama’s statement that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional was over the top, so, too, is Dow’s suggestion that the Supremes face impeachment if they overturn Obamacare. The nine Supreme Court justices are carefully considering an extremely weighty question and they all clearly take the responsibility seriously. It’s for us, at this point, not to issue premature accusations of judicial activism or calls for impeachment, but to let the Supreme Court justices do their job.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/04/law-professor-impeach-supremes-if-they-overturn-obamacare/

Rubio’s DREAM: Will it win Latinos to the GOP?

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has never fully supported the DREAM Act, but he says he has always supported the idea behind it: Undocumented immigrant children don’t bear responsibility for the decision of their parents to bypass the legal immigration process, and they shouldn’t be made to bear that responsibility. Rubio wants to propose a modified version of the DREAM Act, one that won’t incentivize “chain migration,” but that also won’t relegate children to “shadow” status in this country. CNSNews.com reports:

In an April 1 interview with liberal commentator Juan Williams on Fox News Latino, Rubio said he does not support the DREAM Act as currently drafted. But he said he would sponsor a proposal that incorporates the “idea” of helping young illegal immigrants by providing them with a special visa to allow them to stay in the country legally while waiting in line to get citizenship.

Rubio has not yet published a specific proposal of his “idea” and has only provided broad details of what the alternative DREAM Act would entail.

“I support the idea behind the DREAM Act, which is to help these young kids. I don’t support the DREAM Act as currently drafted because it allows for chain migration, because it creates a pathway to citizenship that can potentially encourage illegal immigration in the future,” Rubio told Williams.

“I do support, and I have consistently supported, even during my campaign, I’ve supported the notion that we need to accommodate these kids that, through no fault of their own, find themselves in this legal limbo,” he said. “But we have to do it the right way. And so I’m actively engaged in working with my colleagues, and with outside groups, and with anyone who would work with me to craft a solution that helps deal with this issue, but doesn’t do it in a counter-productive way.”

It sounds as though Rubio wants to allow children in the country illegally to apply for certain types of visas — but it’s unclear whether they’d be guaranteed those visas. If their presence is guaranteed to be made legal in the United States, then it’s hard to see how Rubio’s DREAM wouldn’t still unfairly reward parents’ decision to forgo the legal immigration process. If their presence isn’t guaranteed to be made legal, then it’s hard to believe kids would apply for the visas and risk punishment for the revelation that they (and, by extension, their parents) are in the country illegally.

It seems safe to say, though, that any type of outreach on this issue couldn’t hurt the GOP’s chances with Latino voters — and that fact will probably make Rubio’s DREAM appealing to Romney and other party leaders who’ve rejected DREAM as it stands now and might welcome the opportunity to soften their stance on help for alien minors.

Neither the current version nor Rubio’s version will solve the illegal immigration problem, though. The system itself is in desperate need of reform — and the reward for tackling the issue would probably be about as great as the reward Paul Ryan has received for tackling entitlement reform. There just isn’t much political incentive to dig into the nitty gritty of the actual immigration process. Until someone does, though, the risk-reward calculus will continue to favor illegal immigration over legal immigration and, every 10 to 20 years, we’ll have to decide again how best to assimilate the immigrants who’ve entered our country illegally and managed to live and work here for years.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/04/rubios-dream-will-it-win-latinos-to-the-gop/ 

Did “Government Investment” Make America Great? Obama Thinks So.

    Obama said that Republicans have “one message and that is, we’re going to make sure that we cut people’s taxes even more — so that by every objective measure our deficit is worse and we will slash government investments that have made this country great,” he argued, “not because it’s going to balance the budget, but because it’s driven by our ideological vision about how government should be. That’s their agenda, pure and simple.”

You learn a lot from Professor Obama, don’t you? You may have thought the Founding Fathers, who strongly believed in low taxes, small government, and checks and balances to keep politicians from gaining too much power helped make America a great nation. You might give even more credit to the many soldiers who gave their lives for freedom, along with the great American inventors, entrepreneurs, and the masses of decent Americans who worked hard, took care of their families, and pursued the American dream.
Instead, Obama seems to believe this country is great because a bunch of know-it-all politicians confiscated people’s money and “invested” it for them.

Why, just think of all the wonderful “investments” we’ve had since Obama became President. What would we have ever done without the Cash for Clunkers program? What about the loan to Solyndra? We also can’t forget the greatest Obama “investment” of them all, the stimulus bill. The Obama administration said we had to borrow a trillion dollars to create “jobs, jobs, jobs” and keep unemployment under 8%. What did we get out of that “investment?” A bunch of “projects funded by the federal stimulus” road signs? Wow, that was money well spent. Obama might as well have just asked liberals to write “I heart Obama” in toilet stalls across the country. It would have had about the same impact and we could have saved a trillion dollars.

Here’s a newsflash for Barack Obama: government investments didn’t make this country great. The government’s role in America’s greatness was building roads, securing America against enemies foreign and domestic, street lights, a few basic regulations and getting out of everyone’s way. The people did all the rest and the very fact that Obama is lolling around the White House, thinking that he’s responsible for America’s greatness because he’s confiscating money from people who’ve earned it and doling it out to a bunch of bureaucrats, campaign contributors, and wasteful government programs is as galling as it as foolish.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/01/did-government-investment-make-america-great-obama-thinks-so/

Medvedev: Working with comrade Obama has been the ‘best three years’ for U.S.-Russian relations in a long time

Throughout the 2008 campaign Barack Obama promised that if elected he would ‘restore our standing’ in the world. I’m not sure all of our allies feel the same way, but as far as Russia is concerned: mission accomplished.

    My colleague Barack Obama and I have once again had a constructive discussion of the various issues on the international agenda and on bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States.

    I said that although there are varying assessments of the reset in relations that has been much spoken about over these last three years, I think that we have accomplished very useful work over this time. These have perhaps been the best three years in relations between our two countries over the last decade.

This is an excerpt from prepared remarks delivered by outgoing Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at the close of the nuclear security summit in South Korea at the beginning of this week. So in a way it’s old news – in Russia – where the highlighted statement by Medvedev was splashed across numerous headlines. But curiously, there was nary a mention of it in the U.S. media. You’d think this sort of lavish praise for President Obama would be considered newsworthy, if for no other reason that the statement was also an implicit criticism of the Bush Administration. Was our media too busy covering (up) Obama’s ‘hot mic’ gaffe to mention this? Because if anything the president’s gaffe makes this statement by Medvedev even more newsworthy. Since it clearly suggests that the Russian government would relish the prospect of even more ‘flexibility’ under a second Obama term. If three years were so great, why not eight?

I think the White House realizes that the optics of these cozy little interchanges between Obama and Medvedev are really not good for the president. They can mock Mitt Romney all they want, but most Americans voters grew up in an era where Russia was our primary political ‘foe’. And it’s not lost on most Americans that the Russian government has continued to be a thorn in our side in dealing with Iran, Syria, and a host of other global challenges. Nor is it lost on most Americans that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has effectively presided over the Russian government for more than a dozen years now. If concern over Russia’s foreign policy intentions is based on caricature, it’s a caricature the Russian government has done absolutely nothing to dispel through their actions in recent years.

Given the concessions already made by the Obama Administration on missile defense, and the new START treaty, not to mention our support of Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization, it’s hardly surprising that the Russians would have such a favorable view of U.S. policy over the past 3 years. But I’m pretty sure most Americans don’t view Russian policy towards the U.S. in the same favorable light, nor do they place much value on restoring our standing in the world, especially when it comes at the price of weakening our defenses.

Like certain other fulfilled campaign promises (ahem, ObamaCare), this one is also a political loser. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/01/medvedev-working-with-comrade-obama-has-been-the-best-three-years-for-u-s-russian-relations-in-a-long-time/