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Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is a juggernaut that just won't stop being successful. Although sales of its iPod digital music players have waned a bit in recent memory, the company is selling boatloads of its newer iPhone 3G, which are also iPods in case you have forgotten. But one area that just won't get as much mainstream press is the incredible success Apple is having getting more customers to buy its computers.

Apple moved into the third spot in the U.S. in PC sales recently -- overtaking Taiwan's Acer -- and now is the world's sixth-largest seller of computers in addition to the third place ranking in the U.S. For Apple to make these kinds of strides among the commodity companies that all pretty much sell the same product with Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Vista operating system is quite the achievement. And remember, on all those new Apple machines comes Microsoft's main consumer nemesis -- the Apple Mac operating system (also enjoying leaps in market share).

If Apple CEO Steve Jobs planned on the iPod and iPhone causing so much market stir that it would actually lead to more Mac PC sales, he was right. Apple has never had the market share it has now and it's done nothing but grow for over a year now. IDC analyst Loren Loverde told CNET, "They've got great products and they are executing well ... they are benefiting from the excitement and press over their other products." That quote describes the halo effect Apple continues to have right now which is benefiting more areas of its business than just the iPod/iPhone universe. Jobs:1, Microsoft:0. For now, at least.

2008 will be the year that both General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) went down in recent history as the complete sandbags those companies have really become. Both are losing money hand over fist (save for Ford's most recent profit surprise), and are struggling with trying to provide vehicles customers actually want to buy -- as distinct from vehicles they were projecting to produce.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner said recently that a GM bankruptcy won't be coming, although the automaker then announced it would be laying off even more workers as it digs and scratches its way to some type of profitability. A question then came up in the market again: would a foreign auto company be willing to take a stake in either American icon? How about those up-and-coming Chinese automakers who are cranking out fuel-efficient cars by the boatload and could be seen as very eager to enter the U.S. market?

Not so fast -- according to The New York Times, Chinese automakers are not interested. Not interested in equity stakes or even buying asset pieces from either American automaker. GM's recent sale notice for its struggling Hummer division and Ford's recent sale of Volvo didn't even register on the radars of Chinese auto companies, according to the report.

It's hard to see any company buying Hummer (except a military contractor) with global fuel prices where they are, but Volvo would be a neat catch for a company wanting to expand beyond a single global region. Ford doesn't have a buyer yet, but a deal could be announced any day now. Still, Chinese automakers may be smarter than to partner with or buy into two currently dead weights in the vehicle business. There are plenty of other global auto partners besides GM and Ford.

After seeing the above advertisement at the website of Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), I can see why the Samsung Instinct has become Sprint's hottest-selling phone with 3G capability ever in just over a month on the market. Sprint has sure pulled out all the stops to ensure its would-be customers that this phone is every bit as capable as the vaunted iPhone 3G. In fact, you feel like you are watching a movie by visiting www.sprint.com and seeing the entire Samsung Instinct advertisement -- complete with helicopters and a Batman-esque feel.

But, what's significant about Sprint's online marketing campaign for the Instinct is the integration with Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube. Notice the red callout in the above picture. Samsung Instinct owners are being encouraged to shoot a home movie that includes shots of the Instinct handset. If you do that and then notify Sprint, the company will pay you $20.

This is an interesting marketing angle, and it's one I've never seen before. Is this the kind of advertising we'll see from companies in the future? Sprint will be throwing out $20 bills to anyone who creates a viral video on YouTube with their product prominently featured. I suppose that's cheaper than national TV airtime and probably will reach the intended audience for the Instinct handset as effectively as possible (the YouTube generation). I have to give Sprint some credit here -- this is a great marketing idea and plan and will help it compete with the iPhone 3G.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is in hot water with about 5,000 of its call center employees. The class is suing the world's second-largest computer maker, alleging it underpaid them. Any Dell call center employee in the U.S. who worked for the company from February 8, 2004 to the present can join the class.

The lawsuit stems from claims of not being paid for overtime or training for two employees who originally brought the case almost 18 months ago. Since that time, more than 80 employees have joined the suit and a federal judge gave it class action this week to cover all Dell's call center employees in the U.S. It's hard to gauge what material effect this case will have to Dell's bottom line, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it mentioned on upcoming financial documents since it's now a federal class action.

This is not good news for Dell, which was already under the gun in another suit for alleged deceptive sales practices and fraud. The company, which has seen good sales figures lately and seems to be on the right track to not losing more market share to larger competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ), will have a rough time with this suit, I suspect. If the current and former employees have documented, unpaid (or underpaid) hours that were witnessed by others and have paychecks to back up those claims, Dell may need to be ready to pay out.

A Harvard report was release this week that again is setting the tobacco world on fire. Well, at least figuratively. In the report, the compound Menthol was the focus, and it was concluded that by varying the amount of it in certain brands of cigarettes, tobacco companies could recruit and keep younger smokers and those who may have had an initial bad reaction to smoking upon starting the habit.

The strategy was to "lock in lifelong adult smokers," said the researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. After all the past shenanigans that the tobacco industry has admitted to, it's not surprising to hear that using a varying chemical level strategy to recruit smokers and get them hooked was tried. It was found that milder cigarette brand with lower menthol levels were more appealing to younger smokers. hence, these products were marketed to that age group as a result, according to the report.

One particular example cited was the strategy Philip-Morris USA used when it introduced "Marlboro Milds" back in 2000. The product instantly became a hit with younger smokers was responsible for almost 80% of the menthol product category sales for the company that year.

United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) lowered its Q2 guidance just under a month ago amid worries that high increases in fuel costs would shave a bit off its earnings, which is coming up this Monday. While the company is still expected to post an EPS figure of $0.82 for its second quarter, this would be an 18% drop from the year-ago period. Its stock has recently hit a 52-week low, but then again, a recent analyst upgrade has the shares rallying a bit to offset that low.

Although fuel costs are affecting just about any company involved in transportation, the business and consumer shipping industry is still apparently going decent even in a downbeat economy. UPS said that package volume was being negatively affected by the U.S. economy, though -- and this is having an effect on international package volume as well. It's not that businesses and consumers have stopped shipping -- perhaps they are delaying shipping or forgoing it together on some items.

UPS did say that its Supply Chain and Freight segment was expected to outdo expectations for the second quarter, which will be a nice bright spot for the company. So, I have to ask: have you stopped ordering products (as a business or consumer) that require shipping? That is what UPS is implying with the statement it came out with on June 23rd when it lowered Q2 guidance. My bet -- UPS will earn $0.80 per share, even lower than its lowered guidance. What's your call?

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s will report its second quarter earnings today after the market close. The search engine company will most likely meet or top hyped estimates once again. Literally, Google is becoming an unstoppable force in internet advertising. With more traditional media dollars flowing to the web and away from radio and print mediums, Google stands to grow ever taller.

In June, that sentiment was proven once again as Google's U.S. internet search market share neared 70%. We're talking 69.17% of all searches performed in the U.S. -- home and business -- belonging to Google and its various tentacles. The competition lost market share as Google gained it. Although the gains and drops were small, it's all relative. A 1% drop or gain can mean tens of millions of web searches (or more).

It's taken Google about two years to come from the 60% U.S. search market share level to near 70%, as it crossed the 60% level in July 2006. The company has only grown stronger since then, and Google's advertising inventory increases as its search engine is used -- and that's how Google makes almost all of its money. It can continue to grow its revenues if it continues taking search market share. If that slows down, Google will need to step up the monetization of its other products pretty swiftly. Therein lies the Achilles' Heel for GOOG investors.

When I read that Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) website didn't officially support the world's second-largest web browser until just recently, I was stunned. The Mozilla Foundation, maker of the super-popular Firefox web browser, now commands about 19% of the global web browser market, behind Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Internet Explorer web browser.

Yet, many (many) websites I visit (some very high-profile ones) were made for Internet Explorer only. These websites break at various points when using the Firefox web browser, mine, and millions others, favorite.

What are these Fortune 500 companies thinking? If a product has nearly 20% of any market, you darn well better pay attention to it. With more and more time being spent online instead of in front of the TV, website publishers need to recognize the value of supporting more than just the leading web browser. I can easily understand not designing a web experience for products that have lower single-digit market shares, but that's not what we're talking about here.

So, it was with disdain that I recently read that a Bank of America web support representative stating, "Please note Bank of America does not support Firefox." With email, actual workflow applications, multimedia and an entire media consumption empire existing on the web, the challenge for many websites will be to not forget the other large pieces of the pie. Ignore web browsers with growing market share at your peril, I say.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), the beleaguered financial giant with a completely ineffective CEO at the helm, will report quarterly earnings (or losses) tomorrow. Most likely, we will see yet another company taking steep losses due to bets on mortgage-backed securities and other goofy investments. When Citigroup kicked former CEO Chuck Prince out the door, his replacement was even more strange. Citigroup is floundering to this day, although I have no doubt the banking and investment giant will recover.

Citigroup's shares are currently at the lowest level since the company was formed a decade ago. It announced the sale of its German banking business for $7.7 billion just last week, and now analysts polled by Zacks are expecting a net loss of $0.42 per share when the finance behemoth announces quarterly results this Friday. Reuters estimates that losses could go as high as $0.60 per share. Regardless of the loss, either would be quite a drop -- over 134% to be exact -- from the company's year-ago EPS figure of $1.24.

What will Citigroup do? Well, it will continue digging itself out of the hole it's responsible for, just like every other finance company that bet the shaky farm on every Tom, Dick and Harry getting a $600,000 mortgage with a $50,000 annual income. In addition to selling off some assets in Germany, Citigroup is shedding some Japanese assets as well as saying it may be two or three years before its returns come back to favorable levels.

Do you own Citigroup shares? If so, are you holding on for the long run or have you sold them already?

Proving the rule that large mergers rarely work out as planned, computer chip giant Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) will write down $880 million of the purchase cost of graphic chip giant ATI, the company AMD bought over a year ago. Add that to the fact that AMD's product delays have cost it market share, and you can be sure that competitor Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has been singing a happy tune lately.

AMD is expected to take $32 million in restructuring costs due to employee severance costs resulting from last September's job cuts, and record a loss of $0.52 per share on revenue of $1.45 billion come tomorrow's earnings release. This would be in line with analyst expectations, but at the same time, may not please investors much. AMD management is also expected to give conservative guidance for the current quarter due to soft seasonality and the overall U.S. economic environment, since so many of its products are consumed here.

AMD really needs to get out a price competitive, cutting-edge processing chip for the laptop PC that can compete with Intel's Core 2 Duo product and the Centrino wireless offering. Laptops are the hottest PC category and AMD is letting Intel have all the fun. Its current dual-core chip lineup just can't compete and requires too much energy to operate. I hope analysts nail down AMD's exact road map and time lines for these products, which it needs if it expects to be competitive at all during the remainder of 2008. Right now, it's not even close.

It's no secret that Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) has been losing hordes of customers in the last year as it continues to struggle with not only its dual-network business model but with retaining customers. Although rumors of another large wireless telecom company buying Sprint Nextel have surfaced recently, nothing has really panned out. However, the most serious rumor has now just shown up at the door.

South Korean wireless telecom giant SK Telecom is apparently in talks to buy the struggling U.S. wireless carrier according to reports this week. However, there have also been reports that the company just wants to "partner on technology" with Sprint. Whatever the outcome may be, Sprint trades at just over $9 per share at this time, so a merger attempt now would be timed right. Since SK Telecom's market value is only about half that of Sprint's, private financing was suggested as the tool that would make a deal possible. Sprint may have had recent problems, but it's still the third-largest carrier in the U.S. with over 52 million customers. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Then again, SK Telecom may only make a partial investment in Sprint (a technology partnership, perhaps), in case it can't come up with the financing sources for an outright purchase. Similar to German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom -- which owns U.S. carrier T-Mobile USA -- the South Korean company wants a major presence in the U.S. Considering the top five wireless carriers in the U.S., Sprint Nextel is by far the most likely to give it the needed presence as the other four in the top five are already accounted for.

In what I consider a strange move, Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) said recently that it would begin offering more hybrid phones that work with the older Nextel Direct Connect walkie-talkie feature along with having voice service available with Sprint's current network. As many of you know, Sprint Nextel operates two completely incompatible wireless networks in the U.S. -- a reason oft cited as the main cause of the failure of Sprint and Nextel to fully merge.

Perhaps Nextel's network is the only reliable one for the much-needed walkie-talkie service that so many companies and industries rely on. If you're in construction, manual labor or field work, you most likely have experienced Nextel's walkie-talkie service at some point. But, it appears Sprint is indeed trying to keep its two networks separate instead of integrating both into a single, national network with a singular customer base.

Sprint deployed a replacement service to the Nextel walkie-talkie feature years ago called "Ready Link," but the service did not catch on with dedicated Nextel subscribers or even new Sprint subscribers at all. In fact, I would go as far as to say the only worth the older Nextel network has to Sprint at this point is the popularity of its Direct Connect service. Other than that, why on earth would Sprint just kill the Nextel brand and product and put it to rest once and for all? It's already written off almost the entire merger price anyway.

Will Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) be able to stay afloat with its track record of good earnings reports this Thursday when it reports Q2 numbers? The internet search and advertising giant is expected to have a 33% lift over the year-ago quarter. To me, that sounds like an unstoppable freight train like it has for a few years now.

Google's growth means that the addiction many of us have to finding information anywhere at any time is playing right into Google's mantra of having universally-accessible information at our fingertips anywhere, with any device. Think the U.S. economy is affecting ad spending on Google? If analyst predictions are right this Thursday after the bell, you may be proved wrong.

The 25-analyst estimate is for a $4/share profit for Google. Any tech company would love to have that figure. The company, which has partnered with competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and rules many of the markets it competes in (specifically, search and advertising), still has not found an anchor to keep it grounded in terms of making money. Although most still comes from search text advertising, will that growth slow down in the near future? The more that's been speculated in the recent past, the more it hasn't turned out that way.

Following the Dow and the NASDAQ here in the Americas, European and Asian markets almost unilaterally lost any previous gains, as the major indexes all fell. Both Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke were both being pitched in the media as potentially saying the credit market losses were hurting the U.S. economy. As a result, the U.S. dollar was at a record low against the euro.

If it's not one thing with the U.S. economy, it's another, when it comes to the complete mess the mortgage overextension problem has created. Said Roberto Mialish from Unicredit Markets & Investment Banking: "The markets are reacting negatively to the renewed credit crisis in the U.S. and that's hurting the dollar across the board ... the market is speculating that Bernanke will offer a gloomy outlook for the U.S. economy.''

Below is a foreign market review for this morning:

European markets:

• The Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 Pr: at 3,132.37, down 83.87 (-2.61%)
• The FTSE 100 Index: at 5,173.10, down 127.30 (-2.40%)
• The DAX 30: at 6,049.42, down 150.83 (-2.43%)
• The S&P/MIB Index: at 27,059.00, down 689.00 (-2.48%)

Asia/Pacific markets:

• Nikkei 225 Average: closed at 12,754.56, down 255.60 (-1.96%)
  
• The S&P/ASX 200 Index: closed at 4,815.70, down 105.30 (-2.14%)
  
• Hang Seng Index: closed at 21,174.77, down 839.69 (-3.81%)

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to make billions in revenue each quarter on the back of its extensive text advertising network used on various Google properties as well as partner websites. The argument can still be made that the large majority of Google's income rests on the back of those simple ads which can be eerily relevant and lucrative for those who advertise on Google's network. One area, though, that has fallen by the wayside in recent years is the importance of Google ads in its Gmail email service.

Although competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) still has a larger customer base of email users, Google's Gmail product counts tens of millions of global, more affluent users. Although the company gives almost all its products away for free, you won't see advertising inside most of them.