Despite increased competition from Android-based smartphones, Apple still controls over 50% of the U.S. market, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. In fact, “The research firm says that the iPad and iPhone marker is taking back marketshare from rival Google's Android, managing to grab 53.3 percent of U.S. smartphone sales for the four-month period ending November 25,” ZDNet reports. 

Standing apart from most pundits, Tim Wu -- senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission from 2011-2012 -- doesn’t think Google got the upper hand in its recent standoff with the FTC. “Too many reporters fell for the line that Google used some fancy combination of executive charm and lobbying prowess to beat the federal government at its own game,” Wu writes in The New Republic. Rather, Wu argues that the FTC simply did what was best for consumers by letting Google off the hook. 

Consumer-approved services that block online advertising are gaining steam, and putting ad firms on high alert. Take Free, a telecom with an estimated 5.2 million Internet-access users in France, which just began letting customers block ads online. “That move has raised alarm among companies that, like Google, have based their entire business models on providing free content to consumers by festooning Web pages with paid advertisements,” The New York Times reports. 

Apple on Monday proudly announced that over 40 billion apps have so far been downloaded from its iOS App Store. “The App Store, which launched about four years ago, currently features more than 775,000 apps,” VentureBeat notes. “And while the 40 billion download milestone is impressive, what’s more impressive is that about 20 billion of those downloads happened in 2012.” 

Shifting strategies, Spotify has ceased the sale of music through its streaming service. As Pocket-lint reports, U.S. consumers never had access to the “in-app purchase” feature, so its removal will not affect them. As for the markets that did lose in-app purchases, Spotify says: “We're not ruling out their return.” 

To the chagrin of the U.S. State Department, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is reportedly committed to visiting North Korea. “Schmidt is planning a ‘private’ visit to North Korea, a South Korean foreign ministry spokesman told Bloomberg, this week. In response, a State Department spokeswoman said she doesn’t think the timing of the trip “is particularly helpful.” 

Perhaps premature, The Wall Street Journal is writing the latest obituary for e-readers. “The shrinking sizes and falling prices of full-featured tablet computers are raising questions about the fate of reading-only gadgets,” it reports. All the data -- including recent findings from IDC -- show e-reader shipments waning while tablet sales soar.  

At Apple’s expense, Samsung’s smartphone business is poised for another big year, according to Strategy Analytics. In fact, Samsung should increase phone sales by 35%, this year, the research firm tells Reuters. Not to be outdone, however, Apple could fight back with a smaller, cheaper "iPhone Mini," the researcher suggests.  

Political pundit, author, and blog pioneer Andrew Sullivan said this week that he is leaving his current gig at The Daily Beast to produce his own subscription-based Web site. Regarding the “bombshell” announcement, GigaOm asks: “Can [Sullivan] become the first prominent success story in what some have called the move towards ‘post-industrial’ journalism?” 

Desperate to grow its social network, Google is “requiring” people to use Google+, The Wall Street Journal reports. “The result is that people who create an account to use Gmail, YouTube and other Google services … are also being set up with public Google+ pages that can be viewed by anyone online.” What’s more, WSJ reports that Google CEO Larry Page is championing the aggressive social strategy.