Lakers guard Bryant finally joins Twitter world

(Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers All-Star guard Kobe Bryant finally succumbed to the social network Twitter when he opened his own verified account on Friday.
"The antisocial has become social #mambatweets," Bryant, who is nicknamed "Black Mamba", said in his first tweet.
Within five hours of his account being open, the 14-time All-Star and five-time NBA champion had attracted nearly 300,000 followers.
One of the most popular players in the game and a regular user of Facebook, Bryant had flirted with Twitter when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account last week.
"You're able to get a lot of great feedback about the game but also about the product as well -- what they thought, what they like, what they didn't like," the 34-year-old told reporters about the benefits of Twitter.
"It's the best way to gauge reaction."

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Kobe Bryant: I'm on Twitter now

against the Los Angeles Clippers, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, in Los Angeles. (AP …more
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kobe Bryant is no longer a holdout. He's on Twitter.
With five words — "The antisocial has become social" — the Los Angeles Lakers guard sent the first tweet from his account Friday. About 270,000 people followed his verified account, (at)kobebryant, within a few hours and he was up to 365,000 late Friday night as the Lakers played the Clippers.
Bryant tiptoed into the Twitterverse last week when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account, when he sent out things like a photo of him hanging out with his daughter, an ice bath that he was dreading and even a suit he was wearing to a particular game.
Bryant says those few days made him consider starting his own account, saying he enjoyed connecting with fans "with no filters."
Heat star LeBron James has 6.8 million followers, the most of any NBA player.

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Monti, in Twitter Q&A, says new voting law priority for Italy

ROME (Reuters) - Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said on Saturday if he wins February's parliamentary election one of his first acts would be to overhaul the voting law to improve democracy and government stability.
Monti, 69, who last week confirmed he would lead a centrist coalition in the February 24-25 vote, called himself a "bit of a pioneer" in politics during nearly 2 hours of #MontiLive tweets.
The electoral law is unpopular because party leaders select candidates and voters cannot choose their representatives. For technical reasons, it also makes forming a stable majority more difficult, leading to broad and unwieldy coalitions.
"This electoral law is not worthy of a country like Italy," said Monti of the 2005 legislation passed when centre-right rival Silvio Berlusconi was in power.
Monti and Berlusconi trail the centre-left in opinion polls and have made multiple appearances, mainly on TV, over the past week as they seek to recoup support and motivate voters who have said they do not intend to vote.
A poll by the Tecne research institute released on SkyTG24 on Friday showed Monti's grouping would likely attract slightly more than 12 percent of the vote.
That compared with 40 percent for the centre-left bloc led by Pier Luigi Bersani's Democratic Party (PD); and 25 percent for the most likely centre-right coalition of Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) and the Northern League.
In a separate tweet, Monti indicated he would "dialogue" with anyone after the vote whether he wins or not, as long as they are "reformists".
BERLUSCONI BROADSIDE
Speaking at the same time in a live interview on the website of Corriere della Sera newspaper, Berlusconi said he would never again ally himself with Monti even though he offered him the leadership of the centre-right just a few weeks ago.
"All Italian citizens, in one way or another, are suffering" as a result of Monti's 13 months in power, said Berlusconi, who says austerity has led the country into a recessionary spiral.
Monti took over in November 2011 when Italy was scrambling to avert a financial crisis and after Berlusconi, besieged by a sex scandal involving an underage prostitute, stepped down.
Berlusconi repeated on Saturday that his resignation was the result of an international plot to oust him and denied having made mistakes during his more than nine years in power.
"My only error is that I have not been able to explain what I have done for the country," Berlusconi said.
"By now (Monti's) image has become that of a person with whom I could not possibly collaborate," Berlusconi said, calling the prime minister's new alliance with two of Berlusconi's former allies a "triple disaster".
Berlusconi said a renewed accord with the Northern League may be finalized on Sunday. The Northern League has said the 76-year-old billionaire must not be the bloc's prime ministerial candidate for a sixth time.
"Monti is an enemy of the north, and stopping him from returning to government is a categorical priority for us. Who is against Monti is an ally of the League," Northern League leader Roberto Maroni tweeted on Saturday.

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Kobe Bryant joins Twitter, 100s of thousands immediately follow him

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Kobe Bryant is no longer a holdout. He's on Twitter.
With five words — "The antisocial has become social" — the Los Angeles Lakers guard sent the first tweet from his account Friday. About 250,000 people followed his verified account, (at)kobebryant, within a few hours and he was up to 365,000 late Friday night as the Lakers played the Los Angeles Clippers.
Bryant tiptoed into the Twitterverse last week when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account, when he sent out things like a photo of him hanging out with his daughter, an ice bath that he was dreading and even a suit he was wearing to a particular game.
Bryant says those few days made him consider starting his own account, saying he enjoyed connecting with fans "with no filters."
Heat star LeBron James has 6.8 million followers, the most of any National Basketball Association player.

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Analysis: US irked by Google chief's NKorea plans

WASHINGTON (AP) — Google chief Eric Schmidt's plan to visit North Korea has put the Obama administration in the awkward position of opposing a champion of Internet freedom who's decided to engage with one of the most intensely censored countries.
The administration is wary for a reason. It fears that Schmidt's trip could give a boost to North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, just when Washington is trying to pressure him.
It was only last month when North Korea launched a long-range rocket in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. While the U.S. and its allies are seeking harsher penalties against the reclusive communist government. That effort is proving difficult because of a resistance from China, a permanent member of the council. Beijing probably worries that its troublesome ally could respond to any new punishment by conducting a nuclear test.
U.S. officials are also concerned that the high-profile visit could confuse American allies in Asia and suggest a shift in U.S. policy as the administration prepares to install a new secretary of state to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama has nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.
An imminent change of government in South Korea, a close U.S. friend, is raising questions about whether the two countries can remain in lockstep in their dealings with the North. Newly elected leader Park Geun-hye is expected to seek a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea after she takes up the presidency in February.
This helps to explain why the State Department, which has been a vigorous advocate of social media freedoms around the world, particularly last year during the Arab Spring, made clear it was displeased by the planned "private, humanitarian" visit by Schmidt and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Their trip is expected this month.
"We don't think the timing of the visit is helpful and they are well aware of our views," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday.
Richardson, a seasoned envoy and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday that the State Department should not be nervous. In interviews with CBS and CNN, Richardson said they had been planning to visit in December but postponed the trip at the department's request because of the presidential election that month in South Korea.
Richardson said he would raise with North Korea the matter of an American detained last month on suspicion of committing unspecified "hostile" acts against the state; the charge could draw a sentence of 10 years of hard labor. He'll also try to meet with the detainee.
He also said he was concerned about North Korea's nuclear proliferation and this was a "very important juncture" to talk and try to move the North Koreans in the "right direction."
Schmidt, Richardson said, was traveling as a private citizen. But the trip raises questions about whether Google has plans for North Korea.
Schmidt, the company's executive chairman, is a staunch advocate of global Internet access and the power of connectivity in lifting people out of poverty and political oppression. There are few countries where the obstacles are as stark. North Koreans need government permission to interact with foreigners — in person, by phone or by email. Only a tiny portion of the elite class is connected to the Internet.
U.S. law restricts American companies' dealings with North Korea, which is subject to tough penalties because of its nuclear and missile programs. Imports of North Korean goods are prohibited, but travel to North Korea, exports of U.S. goods and investment in the country are allowed, subject to some restrictions, such as on exports of luxury goods.
Richardson has been to North Korea at least a half-dozen times since 1994, including two trips to negotiate the release of detained Americans. His last visit was in 2010.
The detainee, Kenneth Bae, is the fifth American held in North Korea in the past four years. That includes two U.S. journalists who were freed in 2009 after former President Bill Clinton traveled to Pyongyang and met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. Richardson said it was doubtful he and Schmidt would meet with Kim Jong Un, but he expected to talk with officials from the foreign affairs and economic ministries and the military.
North Korea could show good will by freeing Bae. But detainees risk becoming bargaining chips for the North in its tumultuous relationship with Washington. The U.S. retains nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.
Kim Jong Un's elevation to leadership after his father's death a year ago offered some hope of better relations. But after agreeing last February to an offer of U.S. food aid in exchange for nuclear concessions, North Korea derailed the deal weeks later when it attempted to launch a satellite atop a rocket that the U.S. believes was a test of ballistic missile capabilities.
Relations were set back further by the latest launch, this time successful, which the North again insisted was for a purely peaceful space program.
In the past year, Kim has made at least stylistic changes that hint at more openness, leading some commentators to call for a fresh outreach by U.S. diplomats. That's something that the nominee for secretary of state, Kerry, might support. But there's still little sign of substantive reform.

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10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Your Smartphone

1. Match Paint Colors
Want to paint your walls the same color of green as your throw pillows? What about making your wainscoting the same color blue as yesterday afternoon's sky? With BEHR's ColorSmart mobile app, you can match the perfect paint color. The app is available for iOS and Android devices.
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: The 5 Best Games You Should Play This Weekend]
Studies show that the majority of adults in the United States own cellphones. As of September, 2012, the Pew Research Center found that 45% of American adults have smartphones.
SEE ALSO: 9 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do Online
[More from Mashable: 5 Lessons Companies Can Learn From the Instagram Fallout]
With everything a smartphone can do, those statistics aren't so surprising. Mobile devices keep you connected at all times, whether it's by phone, texting, email or social media. And there seems to be an app for just about everything. But what about all the ways your smartphone can help with non-digital tasks?
We've rounded up 10 handy and little-known ways to use your smartphone in the physical world -- matching paint color, starting your car from your kitchen, checking your heart rate and more.
What kind of real-world tasks do you complete with mobile devices? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pengpeng.

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Iran building software to control networking sites

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's police chief says the Islamic Republic is developing new software to control social networking sites.
Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam was quoted in Iranian newspapers Saturday as saying the new software will prevent Iranians from being exposed to malicious content online while allowing users to enjoy the benefits of the Internet. He did not say when the software would be introduced.
Moghadam also did not specify which social networking sites would be affected, but both Facebook and Twitter are popular in Iran.
Iranians currently have access to most of the Internet, although authorities block some sites affiliated with the opposition, as well as those that are seen as promoting dissent or considered morally corrupt.
Iran created a government agency last year to oversee Internet usage in the country.

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Can the Government Really Ban Twitter Parody Accounts?

Arizona is entertaining a law that will make it a felony to use another person's real name to make an  Internet profile intended to "harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten," which to some sounds like a law against parody Twitter accounts. The legislation, if passed, would make Arizona one of a few states, including New York, California, Washington and Texas, to enact anti-online-impersonation laws. If these regulations seek to put a stop to fake representations online, that does sound like the end of fake celebrity baby accounts and Twitter death hoaxes. Then again, these laws have existed in these other places for years, and that hasn't stopped the faux accounts from coming in. So what then does this mean?
RELATED: The Army's Social Media Industrial Complex
What kind of stuff is the law intended to prosecute?
RELATED: Why French Broadcasters Can't Say 'Twitter' and 'Facebook' Anymore
The law does not say that all uses of another person's real name can be charged as a felony, but only profiles made for the more nefarious purposes fall into that territory. The legislation is  targeted at more serious forms of impersonation, like cyber bullying. Two Texas teens were arrested and charged under this law for creating a fake Facebook page to ruin a peer's reputation, for example. Or, the case of Robert Dale Esparza Jr. who created a fake profile of his son's vice principal on a porn site might fall under this law, suggests The Arizona Republic's Alia Beard Rau. Or, in one of the cases brought to court under the Texas version of this law, an Adam Limle created websites that portrayed a woman he used to date as a prostitute. (The case was eventually dropped because of a geographical loophole. Limle lived in Ohio, not Texas.)
RELATED: Prius Drivers Will Get Their Own Social Network
Okay, the harm and threat in those situation is pretty clear. How can it at all apply to something relatively harmless, like a Twitter parody account?
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The term "harm" is pretty vague, as this Texas Law blog explains, referring to that state's version of this legislation, on which Arizona based its own law. "'Harm' can be very broadly construed–one person's joke is another person's harm," writes Houston lawyer Stephanie Stradley.
RELATED: Netanyahu's Son Demonstrates Another Political Risk of Social Media
So, that could extend to parody accounts then?
Well, possibly. Stradley suggests that politicians who had parody accounts created to mock them might have a case. Some of the impersonation of Texas lawmakers has gone beyond just the jokey fake Twitter handle. Jeffwentworth.com is not the official site for Texas state senator, but rather redirects to the web site of the anti-tax advocate group Empower Texans which considers the San Antonio politician the “the most liberal Republican senator in Austin.” Wentworth told The New York Times this domain squatting amounted to "identity theft," and could be the basis for the law's usage.
The law could also possibly effect sillier parody accounts, suggest privacy advocates. "The problem with this, and other online impersonation bills, is the potential that they could be used to go after parody or social commentary activities," senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation Kurt Opsahl told The Arizona Republic's Alia Beard Rau. "While this bill is written to limit 'intent to harm,' if that is construed broadly, there could be First Amendment problems."
Ok, but what about precedent? Has the law ever applied to a faux Twitter handle?
Twitter has its own parody policy that mitigates a lot of the possible damage that could ever lead to a court case. Saint Louis Cardinals manager Anthony La Russa sued Twitter in 2009 because of a made-up account, but the account was removed before the case went anywhere (And that was before these laws went into effect.)
But it's not clear that parody would ever be considered harmful enough for the law. When California's version went into effect, a first amendment lawyer suggested to SF Weekly's Joe Eskenazi that jokes could go pretty far without prosecution. "You're going to have to have room for satire," he said. The account would have to look fool people, he argued. "A key question is, 'is it credibile?'" asks Simitian. "Do people who read it think it's him?" Because of our increasing skepticism of things on Twitter, unless the site has verified checkmark, it's unlikely that most people believe in a fake account for long. So, unless the imitation tweeter does something extremely harmful to someone's character, it doesn't sound like anyone would have a strong case. Alas, parody Twitter accounts, for better or worse (worse, right?) are here to stay.

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Facebook Making a Phone, Sort Of

Facebook is building a phone right in front of our faces. Maybe not a real phone, but all the apps and features you'd expect one to have.
Facebook has just added a voice message feature to its Messenger app for iOS and Android. Within the app you can now send a recording to your friends. If you've downloaded the new update you can tap the + button next to the box where you input a message, then tap Record, speak your message and then send it off.
But that's only the start of the voice capabilities Facebook is thinking about. In Canada, Facebook is testing live calls using Voice over IP (VoIP) calling similar to Skype. If you have the iPhone app and live in Canada you can tap the "i" button in the corner of the app and tap "Free Call." You can then make a free call to a Facebook friend who is using the same app. You can't call landline or cellphone numbers.
The system can work over 3G and 4G cellular networks, but it's cheaper if you use Wi-Fi. If you are on a cellular network it will eat at your data plan.
Facebook didn't make a big announcement about the services, but it's a very big move for the social networking company. While Facebook declined to comment on whether it would come to the U.S. or if they could charge for the service, it is a step into voice calling for the company. Not only could that be ultimately disruptive for cellular carriers that offer monthly calling packages, it represents an alternative revenue stream for Facebook.
This is just one of many mobile announcements Facebook has made in the past few months. It upgraded both its iPhone and Android apps to make them faster and it released is new Poke app, which destroys messages 10 seconds or less after you look at them.
In addition to its main app and its Poke app, Facebook also has a Facebook Camera app. You'll also recall that Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012.
Rumors of a Facebook branded phone have swirled around for quite a while now. The New York Times and AllThingsD both reported that the company had internal plans to build its own hardware. However, Mark Zuckerberg denied the rumor in July.
"There are a lot of things you can build in other operating systems as well that aren't really taking, that aren't really like building out a whole phone, which wouldn't make much sense for us to do," he said on an earnings call.
That make sense, but with all of its apps and voice calling features, it sure looks like Facebook is playing around with its own phone right in front of our faces.

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NBA-Lakers guard Bryant finally joins Twitter world

Jan 4 (Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers All-Star guard Kobe Bryant finally succumbed to the social network Twitter when he opened his own verified account on Friday.
"The antisocial has become social #mambatweets," Bryant, who is nicknamed "Black Mamba", said in his first tweet.
Within five hours of his account being open, the 14-time All-Star and five-time NBA champion had attracted nearly 300,000 followers.
One of the most popular players in the game and a regular user of Facebook, Bryant had flirted with Twitter when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account last week.
"You're able to get a lot of great feedback about the game but also about the product as well -- what they thought, what they like, what they didn't like," the 34-year-old told reporters about the benefits of Twitter.

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Lakers guard Bryant finally joins Twitter world

(Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers All-Star guard Kobe Bryant finally succumbed to the social network Twitter when he opened his own verified account on Friday.
"The antisocial has become social #mambatweets," Bryant, who is nicknamed "Black Mamba", said in his first tweet.
Within five hours of his account being open, the 14-time All-Star and five-time NBA champion had attracted nearly 300,000 followers.
One of the most popular players in the game and a regular user of Facebook, Bryant had flirted with Twitter when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account last week.
"You're able to get a lot of great feedback about the game but also about the product as well -- what they thought, what they like, what they didn't like," the 34-year-old told reporters about the benefits of Twitter.
"It's the best way to gauge reaction."

Read More..

Kobe Bryant: I'm on Twitter now

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kobe Bryant is no longer a holdout. He's on Twitter.
With five words — "The antisocial has become social" — the Los Angeles Lakers guard sent the first tweet from his account Friday. About 270,000 people followed his verified account, (at)kobebryant, within a few hours and he was up to 365,000 late Friday night as the Lakers played the Clippers.
Bryant tiptoed into the Twitterverse last week when he briefly took over Nike basketball's account, when he sent out things like a photo of him hanging out with his daughter, an ice bath that he was dreading and even a suit he was wearing to a particular game.
Bryant says those few days made him consider starting his own account, saying he enjoyed connecting with fans "with no filters."
Heat star LeBron James has 6.8 million followers, the most of any NBA player.

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New poll shows Israel's leader losing altitude

A new poll shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poised for an election victory but losing support to a rival who opposes Palestinian statehood.
The Dialog poll gave 35 of parliament's 120 seats to Netanyahu's Likud Beiteinu list, indicating he'll head the next government after the Jan. 22 vote. That's down from 39 in the previous Dialog survey.
The centrist Labor Party polled second, with 17 seats.
The poll shows a continued surge by the Jewish Home Party. Its leader, Naftali Bennett, stirred up a storm last week by saying he'd resist evacuating settlements if ordered to do so as a reserves soldier.
Bennett's party received 13 seats in the poll published Tuesday, up from 11.
The poll of 491 people had an error margin of 4.3 percentage points.

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RIM beats estimates in Q3, but subscriber base shrinks

Research In Motion (RIMM) on Thursday posted its financial results for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on December 1st. Investor sentiment has been mixed leading up to the struggling vendor’s third-quarter report, with some analysts insisting there was still money to be made ahead of RIM’s BlackBerry 10 launch and others already counting the days until the company buckles. Wall Street’s consensus for fiscal Q3 2013 saw RIM posting a loss of $0.35 per share on $2.65 billion in revenue and RIM beat expectations on Thursday, recording a net loss of $114 million, or $0.22 per share, on $2.7 billion in sales. This marks RIM’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss as the company pins its hopes on BlackBerry 10, which will be unveiled during a press conference on January 30th.
[More from BGR: iPhone 5, iPad mini users report iOS 6.0.2 is a big drain on battery life]

As far as product shipments go, RIM shipped 6.9 million BlackBerry smartphones on the quarter and just over 250,000 BlackBerry Playbook tablets. The 6.9 million smartphone shipments represent an 51% year-over-year drop from the third quarter of 2011. Even more ominously for RIM, its subscriber base shrunk by 1 million users over the quarter, as the company now counts 79 million total subscribers.

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RIM beats estimates in Q3, reports revenues of $2.7 billion

Research In Motion (RIMM) on Thursday posted its financial results for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on December 1st. Investor sentiment has been mixed leading up to the struggling vendor’s third-quarter report, with some analysts insisting there was still money to be made ahead of RIM’s BlackBerry 10 launch and others already counting the days until the company buckles. Wall Street’s consensus for fiscal Q3 2013 saw RIM posting a loss of $0.35 per share on $2.65 billion in revenue and RIM beat expectations on Thursday, recording a loss of $0.22 per share on $2.7 billion in sales. This marks RIM’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss as the company pins its hopes on BlackBerry 10, which will be unveiled during a press conference on January 30th.

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RIM’s first BlackBerry 10 smartphone to be called the ‘Z10′

Research In Motion’s (RIMM) first BlackBerry 10 smartphone, formerly known as the L-Series and “London” will apparently be called the “BlackBerry Z10″ according to marketing materials obtained by UnwiredView. RIM’s QWERTY BlackBerry 10 device that’s slated for a release sometime between March and June will reportedly go by the name “BlackBerry X10.” As we inch closer to BlackBerry 10′s launch on January 30th in New York City, all eyes are on RIM to deliver a new smartphone and OS that finally catches up to iOS and Android. Most recently, RIM’s Dev Alpha B smartphone running BB10 was spotted crushing the iPhone 5 on iOS 6 and HTC (2498) Windows Phone 8X running Windows Phone 8 in a Web browser speed and rendering comparison test. All RIM needs to do now is deliver compelling hardware and apps to sway users who have long since abandoned BlackBerrys for iPhones and DROIDS.

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RIM shares jump after hours following results

U.S.-traded shares Research In Motion rallied in after-hours trading on Thursday after the BlackBerry maker posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss excluding one-time items.
The company's Nasdaq-listed shares were last up 8 percent at $15.25, extending a 3.6-percent gain in regular trading hours. They are also on track to close with a fourth straight month of gains.
The stock has more than doubled since the start of September, including a more than 46 percent gain in November, but was still negative for the year at the close on Thursday.

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RIM posts smaller than expected loss; shares surge

 Research In Motion reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday and boosted its cash cushion, sending its shares soaring more than 7 percent.
But the struggling BlackBerry maker also recorded the first-ever decline in its subscriber base, barely a month before the crucial launch of the new BB10 smartphone line.
RIM reported a loss of $114 million or 22 cents a share, excluding one-time items. Analysts, on average, had forecast a loss of 35 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
RIM shares, which closed 3.6 percent higher at $14.12 on Thursday, rose 7.6 percent after the closing bell in the United States to $15.20, as investors cheered the surge in RIM's cash pile ahead of next month's launch of the new BB10 devices.
RIM built its cash cushion up to $2.9 billion in the quarter, from $2.3 billion in the prior period. RIM will need the funds to manufacture and promote its new line of products ahead of the January 30 launch.
The Waterloo, Ontario-based company hopes to reinvent itself and revive its fortunes with the BlackBerry 10. It also reported a surprise net profit in its fiscal third-quarter, reflecting a one-time tax gain from restructuring of its international operations.
In the period ended December 1, RIM reported net income of $9 million, or 2 cents a share. That compared with a year-ago profit of $265 million, or 51 cents.
RIM said its subscriber base fell to about 79 million in the quarter from about 80 million in the period ended September 1.
The decline is a disconcerting marker in the history of RIM, which virtually invented the concept of on-the-go email. In recent years, RIM's user base has grown, even as the BlackBerry lost ground in North America and Europe, boosted by gains in emerging markets.
The company, whose aging line of BlackBerry devices has lost ground to the likes of Apple Inc's iPhone and a slew of devices powered by Google Inc's Android operating system, said it shipped 6.9 million smartphones in the quarter.

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