BUSINESS

After topping smartphone sales the past three quarters in effect taking away the smartphone crown from Apple, South Korean tech firm Samsung is now threatening to also dislodge the California-based company from its top spot in the tablet market.

Australian officials were recently crowing about becoming the global leader in solar power generation with the announced roll out of the $1.2-billion Western Downs facility.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed unchanged, the S&P was flat at 1380 and the Nasdaq was flat.It was a quiet and low volume Veterans' Day on stock and commodity markets, as expected, with banks and bond markets closed last night.

One of the features of the last trading week was the weakness of the US market in the aftermath of the US Presidential election. The main thrust of the selloff was driven by the uncertainty created by the US fiscal position, a situation increasingly referred to as the US 'Fiscal Cliff'.This combination of expiring tax cuts and cuts to government spending will result in a fiscal contraction of around $600mln which could take up to 4% off US growth in 2013 if unresolved by year end.

For the first time ever, cherries picked from the Australian region of Tasmania will sail and be sold in the lucrative Chinese market based on the approval draft of the two countries.

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc informed that its trading was on course as it announced that Alain Michaelis was to replace retiring chief operating officer Mike Terrett. The world's second-biggest producer of commercial aircraft engines expects to see good growth in its full-year profit.

Official data showed on the 9th of November that China's annual consumer inflation slowed to a 33-month low on food cost in the month of October thus giving the government scope to introduce new easing measures if needed. The policy of the China's government has succeeded in supporting the growth of the world's second-biggest economy.

Google’s design for the Nexus 10 is for the tablet to serve as a seminal device for Android developers, spurring them to author more apps that are specifically optimised for tablet owners.

There's a veritable trifecta of forces that make gold the most interesting speculation/story for the rest of the year. With Obama's re-election in the US, all attention now turns to the looming 'fiscal cliff'. America's credit rating - and the dollar - are on the line.

'My biggest worry is that millions of Australians are expecting money to be waiting for them that won't be there,' says Nick Hubble, your weekend editor and man behind the new Money for Life Letter, which launched earlier this week. If you haven't seen Nick's new film yet, you can check it out here.

Windows 8-powered devices are hip and cool, Microsoft would want us to believe, and to help the tech giant get this message across, to be absorbed and embraced by global consumers, it decides to employ the services of A-list celebrities.

The Australian sharemarket kicked off the new trading week in the red, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) down by as much as 0.3 per cent within the first half an hour of trade. From 11.30am (AEDT) onwards however; the XAO has managed to stage a recovery and is now largely flat. The local market has lost ground for three straight weeks.

By Greg PeelDanske Bank's base case scenario with respect to the US fiscal cliff is that a resolution will be reached in negotiations by year end.

Despite cooling demand from China for steelmaking ingredients, Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) forecasts Chinese steel output would still hit 1 billion tonnes in the next 20 years.

Speed enthusiasts would be happy to know that top chipmaker Intel just launched a new processor called Itanium 9500 series which belongs to 64-bit family. According to Intel, the new processor offers up to 2.4 times performance scaling and 33 per cent faster Input and output speed versus its previous generation.

Samsung reigned supreme in the past three quarters of 2012 as the Best-Selling SmartPhone Manufacturer. IDC said the firm sold 56.3 million smartphones compared to Apple's 26.9 million units. Latest figure from Samsung showed that the company sold over 30 million Galaxy S III smartphones in the past five months. The model is Samsung's flagship unit.

Due to projections that the country's resource boom will have a peak earlier than anticipated, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) downgraded Australia's growth forecast for the year to June 2013 to 2.75 per cent from 3.5 per cent.

Passengers of Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Tiger Airways suffered on Saturday from chaos as the check-in system in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney Airport crashed for two hours due to a computer glitch.

Introduced by Greg PeelAt the end of October uranium industry consultant TradeTech dropped its spot price indicator for U3O8 by US$5.

Activision Blizzard Inc. posted its profit for the third quarter which exceeded analysts' estimates as company saw strong sales of its "Skylanders" and "Diablo" game titles. The largest video-game maker has also raised its full-year outlook as it expects strong holiday shopping season's sales of the latest game "Call of Duty."

Shares of Asia Slump On Concerns Over US Fiscal Cliff

Why US Infrastructure Spending Won’t Help the Economy

Stocks fell this morning. Hard. Last we checked, the Dow was down by more than 300 points. Gold dipped too, shaving $20 off the previous session's $45 per ounce gain. And energy prices were down across the board, with a barrel of oil trading just a touch above $85.

The famous pizza restaurant chain, Pizza Hut, reported a website-hacking incident where customer’s names, email addresses and contact information were leaked. Despite Pizza Hut’s claims that the customer’s credit card information was not affected, the unpleasant incident should serve as a lesson for the business to keep strict protection of its personal and financial records.

The Australian sharemarket ended in the red for the second straight day this week, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) slipping by just 0.4 per cent or 19.7 pts to 4482.5. The value of shares traded was significantly higher than usual today. Over the past five sessions local shares eased by just 0.15 per cent, making it the third consecutive week of losses. So far this month, the XAO is down 1.3 per cent; equities have still improved by 8.89 per cent in 2012 which is 4 per cent better than Ameri...

Wal-Mart Tempts Customers with Black Friday Deals on Thanksgiving Night

Smart devices will be the norm of the future with three dominant platforms – Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows – all competing to meet the mobile computing demands of general and business consumers, a new report said.

We don't know. But if it's anything like the last four it will be full of meaningless sound bites, lies, trillion dollar deficits, and probably more bank bailouts. There was something genuinely depressing about the whole US election thing.

Samsung leads the pack this time as reports emerged that rivals of the Asian tech giant have decided to counter the success of its Galaxy Note phablet, already on a second iteration that further stretched the device’s screen size, with of courses more potent specs.