May 2012

With 8.8 percent of mobile phone market share, Apple’s share of profits is 73 percent. Samsung, riding the Google Android juggernaut, grew its market share (by units shipped) to 23.5%, up 35.4% year over year, and its share of the profits to 26%. HTC, by contrast, is barely breaking even. And the rest -- Research in Motion, Nokia, Sony, Motorola and LG -- are losing money.

Remember: We're talking about all mobile phones, not just smartphones. And the entire worldwide market, not just the US.

Verizon launched a new HomeFusion Broadband service that lets consumers use an LTE router in their homes to connect up to four wired and 20 wireless devices to the web through Verizon's LTE network.

Basically the router works like a typical mobile hotspot that uses LTE for basic web connectivity but that uses Wi-Fi signals to push data out to home devices. Verizon began trialing its HomeFusion LTE program in March and will make it available to the general public tomorrow. The catch for a lot of consumers, though, may be the service's pricing. Verizon is charging $60 a month for 10GB of data, $90 a month for 20GB of data and $120 a month for 30GB of data. While many home broadband providers are now implementing data caps, most of them are far higher than what Verizon is offering for its HomeFusion services and at much lower prices. Comcast, for example, offers plans that start as low as $20 a month for new customers and doesn't impose any bandwidth caps until customers exceed 250GB per month.

Embattled by hactivists, cyber criminals and foreign rivals seeking to steal proprietary information, U.S. corporations are ramping up their hiring of cyber security experts, with open jobs reaching an all-time high in April.

The need for cyber security experts spans all industries, from financial services, manufacturing and utilities to healthcare and retail. Among the major U.S. companies trying to fill cyber security-related positions are Boeing, Baylor Health Care System, Verisign and Office Depot. Cyber security jobs also are plentiful in the U.S. federal government market. For example, the Energy Department's Idaho National Lab is seeking a senior cyber security researcher to support its lead nuclear research and development facility.

The 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be an overwhelmingly negative one, much more negative than the 2008 contest to date. 7 out of 10 of the ads aired in this year’s presidential contests have been negative -- that is, they mentioned an opponent. This compares to fewer than 1 in 10 ads aired during the 2008 presidential race up to this point that were negative.

Over 200,000 ads have aired so far. Candidate-sponsored ads, which made up 96.6 percent of the total airings in 2008, declined to just over a third (35.8 percent) of the total this year. Making up for most of the difference are outside groups (including Super PACs) who have sponsored almost 60 percent of the ads aired this year, compared to just 3 percent of ad airings in 2008. An estimated $112M has been spent to date on 207,000 ads compared to $190M spent on just under 300,000 ads in 2008. Much of this decline in spending and ad volume is due to the lack of a nomination contest on the Democratic side this year.