Philipp Humm, the new CEO of T-Mobile USA, has come from sister company T-Mobile Germany to try to boost the carrier's fortunes in the U.S.  Humm is visiting dozens of cities around the nation, holding grassroots town halls with employees to get a sense of where they feel the company should be heading.

Humm sat down with The Times recently to talk up his plans to make smart phones affordable, to get everyone a tablet, and how he'll face off against his bigger rivals in Verizon and AT&T.  He also has a few words about the iPhone (which T-Mobile doesn't yet have) and Apple's Steve Jobs. 

What is one of the more important lessons you learned from operating in the European market?

The best way of being a good challenger is by having played defense for a while.  Now you know how the defenders play the challenger game.  Back at the time in Germany we had very good challengers attacking us.  Looking at how other people attacked you is a very good way to determine how you’ll make your next attack.

Steve Jobs and Apple might have picked the most ideal time possible to announce his medical leave -- on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, when the U.S. markets are closed, and just before releasing news of a 78% earnings increase.

And the decision to announce Jobs' break from day-to-day duties at Apple is probably a calculated one, as are many of the moves made by the secretive tech giant.

Andy Zaky, writing for Seeking Alpha, said he found the Jan. 18 release date for Apple's fiscal first-quarter earnings report "extremely peculiar" when it was announced a month ago.

"Here's why: Since 2007, Apple has always chosen to report earnings during the last week of the month in order to avoid the manipulation that usually comes with options expiration week," Zaky wrote. "If you go back at least 14-16 quarters, Apple has reported during the last week of the month in every one of those reporting periods."

The Tuesday earnings announcement, however, makes a lot more sense given Jobs' announcement that  he was taking an indefinite hiatus because of health issues.

John Gruber, writer of the popular tech blog Daring Fireball, wrote: "With the holiday yesterday and blockbuster results today, I think it's fair to say that yesterday was the single best day of the entire calendar year on which Jobs could have announced a medical leave of absence."

Apple reported a $6-billion profit on a record-setting revenue of $26.74 billion, largely on the success of the iPhone and the iPad.

One unintended consequence from Jobs' temporary decrease in duties at Apple is an apparent benefit for its competitors, as reported by Times columnist Tom Petruno over at our sister blog, Money & Company. Petruno wrote:

What's potentially bad for Apple -- co-founder Steve Jobs' surprise decision to take another medical leave of absence -- might have been viewed as good for the company's many tech rivals.

Nobody ever accused Wall Street of having a heart, after all.

While Apple dropped $7.83, or 2.2%, to close at $340.65, shares of Google Inc. surged $15.45, or 2.5%, to $639.63, a three-year high. Google's Android smart phone operating system is going head-to-head with Apple's iPhone, of course.

Among other tech giants and Apple combatants, Microsoft Corp. added 36 cents, or 1.3%, to $28.66; Oracle Corp. gained 28 cents, or 0.9%, to $31.53; and Dell Inc. was up 5 cents, or 0.4%, to $14.10.

BlackBerry smart phone maker Research in Motion Ltd. rose as much as 2.6% early Tuesday before falling back to close with a gain of 45 cents, or 0.7%, to $65.22.

Read more about how Apple might be helping their rivals in Petruno's post, Apple falls but its rivals gain, pushing Nasdaq index to 3-year high.

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Apple quarterly profit surges 78% to $6 billion; shares fall 2.2% on Steve Jobs' medical leave

Steve Jobs no-show at Verizon iPhone event, the Daily delayed, due to health?

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks at an Apple Special Event on Sept. 1 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

T-Mobile USA Inc. will be adding tablets from LG and Dell to its lineup of mobile broadband devices, the company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday.

T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm brought LG CEO J.S. Park on stage to show off a product called the G-Slate, powered by Google's new Honeycomb version of Android. 

Then Dell Vice President John Thode came on to hold up (but not demonstrate) the yet-unreleased 7-inch Dell Streak 7 tablet. 

Both tablets will run on T-Mobile's cellular network. The executives did not provide pricing information or specific release dates for the tablets.

Instead, T-Mobile focused largely on claims about its network, which it now says is both the largest and fastest 4G network in the U.S. (Wireless carriers frequently highlight that they are the fastest or largest network, but the claims are often based on different critera. In fact, there is still some debate about what 4G actually means, if anything). 

The company says it has beguin deploying a 4G network -- based on a technoogy called HSPA+ -- capable of transmitting data at 42 megabits per second.  That would be almost 100 times faster than many current 3G devices today. But the 42 Mbps number, as executives acknowledged, is a "theoretical peak" -- meaning it is the maximum speed the technology could achieve under ideal conditions. Whether users will ever see that peak is a different matter that is not as frequently discussed.

In a demonstration of the new technology, two T-Mobile engineers showed songs downloading quickly -- about five or 10 seconds for an entire MP3 file. But when they ran a software program designed to show how fast the demonstration network was actually going, it maxed out at 30 Mpbs -- a sign that theoretical peak speeds and the speeds users will actually see may differ substantially.

-- David Sarno

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Toshiba Tablet announced, with 10-inch HD screen, Android Honeycomb

Motorola video teases Android Honeycomb tablet

Photo: LG CEO J.S. Park, left, and T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm show off the just-announced G-Slate tablet.  Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

This year's hottest new tech gadget was undoubtedly Apple's much-talked-about iPad, the sleek tablet computer that has sold millions and started many discussions about whether the future of personal computing will be seen on a touchscreen.

But the iPad debuted only about eight months ago, and the entire nascent tablet market has emerged since then. That is hardly enough time for a new type of technology product to mature or to find the many generalized and specialized tasks it may eventually be used for.

Still, the flood of tablets is about to begin, and we've looked at a few of the newest ones in our Sunday business story about tablet computing, and the accompanying video.

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Four major carriers to sell Samsung Galaxy tablet

BlackBerry Playbook tablet to be under $500

-- David Sarno

Photo: a variety of new tablet computers on sale for the holidays. Clockwise from front: the Dell Streak, Augen Gentouch 78, Maylong M-150, Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Personal-computer maker Dell Inc. more than doubled its net income in its fiscal third quarter, and average consumers had little to do with the increase.

Instead, the public sector and business customers helped push profit to $822 million for the quarter ended Oct. 29, up from $337 million in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue soared 19% to $15.4 billion from $12.9 billion, with sales of desktop and laptop computers making up the majority.

Large companies replacing old technology spent $4.3 billion with Texas-based Dell, up 27% from a year earlier. Smaller businesses poured in 24% more than a year before -- $3.7 billion total.

Even the public sector pitched in $4.4 billion, a 20% increase. Dell strengthened its link to the healthcare industry by providing technology to institutions such as the Methodist Hospital in Houston.
The company’s fiscal year ends in January.

Dell's consumer business reported sales of $3 billion, up 4% from a year earlier.

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HP outbids Dell to pay $2.4 billion for 3Par

Dell: It's not about the music player

-- Tiffany Hsu

CORRECTION: This post corrects sales figures from Dell's consumer business.

Photo: Douglas C. Pizac / Associated Press

Computer maker Dell Inc. withdrew Thursday from the three-week bidding war over tiny data-storage company 3Par Inc., which quickly accepted the offer of $33 a share from Dell rival Hewlett-Packard Co.

HP's final bid -- which values the Fremont, Calif., company at $2.4 billion -- came early Thursday. Dell wasted little time responding: An hour later, it threw in the towel.

The bidding started Aug. 16 with Dell's initial offer of $18 a share, or about $1.13 billion. Several more bids came in rapid succession from both companies, and 3PAR was a sudden sweetheart.

With barely $200 million in annual sales, losses in each of its three years as a public company and a stock price stuck below $10 a share, 3Par seemed an unlikely prize. But each bidder saw its operations as a way to help provide less-expensive data storage and to build up the cloud computing business, which gives customers software, data storage and other services over the Internet.

3Par also has $104 million in cash and short-term investments, which will fall into HP's balance sheet.

For HP, the premium was apparently worth it.  The company has endured falling prices for personal computers -- though it remains the world's leading PC manufacturer -- and was looking to branch out in a technology world that increasingly relies on fast, Internet-based services.

"It looks like an extremely expensive acquisition," said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co.  "But at the end of that day, neither HP nor Dell had products in this category, and it fits."

3Par's revenue grew slightly, to $203 million, in the most recent four-quarter period, but that barely registers on HP's bottom line: The computer giant takes in close to $30 billion a quarter. 

Still, the move was seen as a way for HP to use its marketing muscle to boost sales for the small company, which builds server-level computers that can host the huge amounts of data and heavy-duty online services that power big Internet companies.

Dell, also looking to jump into that market, will have to keep looking.

“We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” said Dave Johnson, Dell's senior vice president for corporate strategy.

Shares of 3Par rose 80 cents, or 2.5%, to $32.88. HP shares rose 47 cents to $39.68, and Dell shares were up 24 cents, or 2% to $12.36.

-- David Sarno

New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo today filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel Corp., the world's largest chip maker, alleging that the company engaged in "a worldwide, systematic campaign of illegal conduct" to further its business and stifle competitors.

“Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,”  Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers, who were robbed of better products and lower prices."

Cuomo's office maintained that Intel paid or threatened some of the world's leading computer makers -- Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM among them -- to prevent the companies from doing business with Intel's main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  The payments, the complaint alleges, came in the form of high-dollar "rebates" to the computer makers, though Cuomo's office dismissed the rebates as "payoffs" that Intel made to hide their true nature.

The case is assembled in part from internal e-mails collected from Intel's business partners and from within the company itself, according to the filing.

“'I understand the point about the accounts wanting a full AMD portfolio,'" wrote an IBM executive in 2005, according to a statement from Cuomo's office. "'The question is, can we afford to accept the wrath of Intel …?'”

Intel could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit is a result of a nearly two-year investigation by Cuomo's office, in which investigators say they evaluated millions of pages of documents and e-mails and interviewed dozens of witnesses.

The suit was filed in federal court in Delaware and aimed to bar Intel from what it called "further anti-competitive acts," and recover damages to New York consumers and government entities.

In May, the European Commission fined Intel nearly $1.5 billion over similar charges of anti-competitive practices, saying the results harmed millions of European consumers.  Intel disagreed with those charges and vowed to appeal the decision.

-- David Sarno

Get ready for a week of phone porn, filled with talk about LTE, femtocells and MVNOs. The Mobile World Congress, the cellphone industry's version of the Consumer Electronics Show, kicks off in Barcelona on Monday.

Thousands of mobile industry professionals will converge on the Spanish city to show off their new gear, announce previously secretive products and try to convince one another that the industry will weather the economic downturn. Research group Strategy Analytics predicted last month that the global mobile phone market would shrink 9% in 2009.

Even if you don't know what those terms above mean (here's a cheat sheet), there's a lot for the casual phone nerd to be excited about, including solar-powered phones, a Nokia app store and "Opera Turbo," which, sadly, is not an opera performed on motorbikes but a mobile Web browser. In case you aren't traveling to Barcelona, here are some things ...

Like a popular mayor declaring he's not going to run for president after all, Dell has scrapped plans for a new MP3 player and subscription service, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Dell says in a blog post, the company's strategy "has never been about a music player." Glad we got that straightened out, but I actually liked the idea of Dell developing an inexpensive WiFi-enabled player that could tune in streams from a variety of sources. The secret sauce behind the rumored player was software from Zing, a Silicon Valley start-up that Dell acquired last year.

"As we said a few months ago, our strategy focuses on content offerings and delivery platforms that mix Zing software, remote access and pre-configured media bundles across all of our devices, including licensing agreements with entertainment distributors," Jay Pinkert wrote on the Dell blog. What that's meant so far is offering to preload new PCs with bundles of MP3s or DRM-encrusted movies for about half the price of individual downloads. That strikes me as a weak offer, especially considering how few options there are (you can't build your own bundles, and there are only 14 packages of music or movies to choose from). Beyond that, what's the no software breakthrough involved in planting some MP3s on a hard drive? What would be more interesting -- and where Dell appears to be going, although it wouldn't say so today -- is if the Zing software became the connective tissue between pieces of each customer's domain. In other words, the software would make it easy to access all your content (pictures, songs, videos or even subscription services) from any device, no matter where it might be stored.

For what it's worth, I was a fan of the Sansa Connect player with Zing software, which originally worked with Yahoo's subscription music service to deliver a nifty "any track, anywhere" experience. (OK, make that an "any track in our limited collection, anywhere you can get free WiFi" experience.) But the Connect became a lot less interesting after Yahoo's music service folded, eliminating users' ability to add songs or playlists to their collection wirelessly, impulsively and at no incremental cost. I cling to the belief that WiFi can turn an MP3 also-ran into a real iPod competitor, given the right back-end service to provide the content. The Slacker G2 is one interesting example, although it's pricey and doesn't have the marketing muscle needed to change how people think about music consumption. With the major labels becoming much more willing to experiment with ad-supported and freemium models, I think it's just a matter of time before someone comes through with an offer that trumps the iPod's approach (i.e. local storage and 99 cents per incremental track). But then, that could very well be Apple.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Apple wasn't the only technology bigwig to weigh in on the laptop market today. Samsung Electronics this morning announced it would dive into the hypercompetitive U.S. laptop market later this year.

Samsung will have its work cut out for it, with Chinese manufacturers nibbling away at the low end of the market with ever cheaper machines and big brands dominating the more profitable premium end. But the South Korean company has taken on other Goliaths -- and won. Most notably, it wrested the title from Sony as the largest seller of flat-screen television sets in the country. And now, it's setting its sights on notebooks.

The game plan for taking on this market appears to be similar to its strategy for tackling TVs: Aim high.

Samsung is introducing five models priced between $1,049 and $2,499 later this year. You can read the specs here. The theory is that shoppers who spend less than $1,000 are looking purely at price. Those who spend more tend to value design and high-end features such as anti-bacterial keyboards, lightweight and long battery life -- features that Samsung aims to deliver with its machines.

"We're looking for the more loyal buyer with more discriminating tastes," said Dave McFarland, Samsung's senior product marketing manager.

Will Samsung succeed? The company last year rang up more than $103 billion in sales, making it one of the world's biggest consumer-electronics powerhouses. It's also made and sold laptops outside of North America since 1983. But when it comes to the U.S. laptop business, Samsung is a newbie. Here, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Apple and Toshiba have the market practically locked up. The five players claimed 77% of the North American notebook market in the second quarter, according to DisplaySearch.

Today, Apple made Samsung's job a little harder, introducing a line of MacBooks that feature, among other things, a glass touchpad.

-- Alex Pham

Photo courtesy of Samsung