Samsung keeps taking bigger bites out of Apple.

According to recently released data from research firm Canalys, the South Korean technology giant is making major strides in winning over US smartphone users, with its share of the overall market growing to 31% in the second quarter of the year, way up from just 23% a year ago. That has come directly at the expense of Apple, which now holds less than half of the US market.

Samsung, Phone Home

When it comes to smartphones, Apple has arguably been gripped for a few years now by the so-called “Innovator’s Dilemma,” the phenomenon in which a company’s overwhelming and long-lasting success in any given sector can lead to complacency and ultimately make it ripe for disruption. The iPhone, a sales juggernaut for nearly two decades, has only marginally evolved in the past few years; investors are still underwhelmed by Apple’s AI ambitions (or lack thereof), with its seeming inability to thoroughly AI-ify voice assistant Siri seen as particularly troubling. (On the other hand, change is risky for a company whose brand appeal is primarily based on intuitive design and an inherent usability … hence, the dilemma).

Samsung, long the US market’s also-ran, faces no such tension. The company has been far more flexible when it comes to design and price point — and the experiments are paying off, fueling a 38% year-over-year boost in shipments, per Canalys:

• In July, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 7, a foldable smartphone that can unfurl to a screen so large it’s practically a tablet, as well as the Z Flip 7, a more pocket-sized flippable smartphone that somewhat resembles 2000s-era “flip phones.” Apple has yet to unveil a foldable or flippable competitor, though JPMorgan analysts have recently told clients the company will probably release a foldable iPhone in September of next year.
• Meanwhile, prices for Samsung’s Galaxy Z line of smartphones run as low as $650 and as high as $2,400, giving consumers far more choice on price points compared with the iPhone’s catalogue. Canalys found that the lower-tier Samsung devices accounted for much of its growth in the second quarter; the cheapest iPhone in the current line runs $829.

Hold the Phone: Samsung’s strides in the smartphone market come just as it may be attracting a new investor: the US government. According to a Reuters report last week, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is exploring options for the government to take an equity stake in Samsung in exchange for the roughly $4.7 billion worth of funding the company scored as part of the Biden-era CHIPs Act, à la the government’s potential arrangement with Intel.

Performers from the 20th-century Sultan of Swoon (Frank Sinatra) to the newly minted World’s Richest Musician (Jay-Z) have promised generations of listeners that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.

Commercial real estate owners, especially those behind the high-rise office buildings that power America’s urban centers, symbolizing “Succession”-style wealth and power, hope the premise still holds. Office-leasing volume in the city that never sleeps reached 14.3 million square feet in the first half of this year, according to global real estate company JLL, the largest total since 2019 — the year before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the lucrative market upside down.

View From the Cubicle

By the next year, businesses were abandoning pricey office leases, and executives were bragging on earnings calls about how much they were saving on overhead, prompting predictions that the salad days of big city office buildings were over. But while the pain for building owners was profound, the predictions of Office Armageddon proved somewhat premature.

“Office owners have experienced a lengthy correction, but there are signs that some segments of the market are finally on an upward path,” Tom Leahy, executive director of research and development for finance company MSCI, wrote in a blog post this summer.

Office occupancy in Asian cities has returned almost to pre-COVID norms, according to MSCI. While vacancy rates remain elevated in Europe and North America, they have picked up in global centers like New York, where office leasing this January was 36% above the 10-year average for the month.

“We’re moving in the direction of getting people more into the office,” Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said on the “From Where I Sit” podcast in May. “In addition, there’s been a tremendous investment in new offices and renovated offices and amenities in those offices. So people have much more fun coming to work in a brand-new office with a ping pong table and a coffee bar, etc., than sitting at home in a studio apartment with three roommates.”

Among the deals bearing out Wylde’s assessment so far this year:

• Professional services firm Deloitte has agreed to lease roughly 75% of the space at 70 Hudson Yards, a new skyscraper in Midtown.
• New York University is renting more than 1 million square feet in the former Wannamaker’s department store in Greenwich Village.

The most iconic development, however, may be the opening of JPMorgan Chase’s new headquarters on Park Avenue. CEO Jamie Dimon announced plans for the building in 2018, two years before the pandemic, and employees of the bank, the largest in the US, with more than $4 trillion in assets, are moving in this fall. The 60-story skyscraper, completely powered by renewable energy, has outdoor terraces with natural green space and amenities from fitness areas to yoga and cycling rooms. (Not to mention automatic solar shades for sweltering summer afternoons when glass facades can magnify the sun’s heat, wilting even a cable news anchor’s airbrushed perfection.) It’s a “long-term investment in our business and New York City’s future,” says Dimon.

Realty Check: For commercial real estate developers, the question now is whether the $3 billion addition to the “concrete jungle dreams are made of” will inspire an office rebound in more major metro markets. City streets outside New York might start making people, or at least office workers, “feel brand new,” too.

A rule that dictates how your personal data is handled and passed between financial institutions is being rewritten.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially asked for feedback on the so-called “open banking” rule last week. Legacy financial institutions and new upstarts have staked out very different positions, and it’s worth paying attention: One side argues your data security is at risk, the other says you’re being ripped off.

To Fee or Not to Fee, That is the Question

The origin of the “open banking” rule goes back to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which introduced sweeping financial reforms after the Great Recession. The law says financial institutions must provide consumers with their data upon request, and the “open banking” rule sought to clarify the details, notably by permitting consumers to request their data be shared with authorized third parties. It was issued in October 2024 but isn’t scheduled to take effect until June 2026.

The idea was to allow consumers greater financial flexibility: By sharing data with third parties, they could find better rates and services, compare products and obtain credit on better terms. Fintechs and the crypto sector hailed the rule as a breakthrough for potentially opening up more competition to traditional banks and credit unions. The banking industry saw things differently:

• While the rule contained strict guidelines for third parties wanting to access the data, the banking industry called for it to be scrapped, while the Bank Policy Institute, an industry trade group, sued to block it. Industry advocates argued it was an overreach of the CFPB’s legal powers, that banks would potentially be forced to pass on data to risky third parties more vulnerable to breaches, and that the industry should be compensated for providing access to customer data (JP Morgan advised fintechs they would have to pay up last month).
• The fintech and crypto sectors have argued that fees are anticompetitive and erode consumers’ freedom to use their financial technologies of choice, with apps like Coinbase, Venmo and Robinhood at risk of being hit with costs for accessing customers’ bank accounts with their consent. Earlier this month, over 80 fintech CEOs signed a joint letter to President Donald Trump objecting to “exorbitant new ‘account access’ fees” and arguing banks were “advancing a dangerous legal interpretation that a consumer’s right to their account information does not include the freedom to share access to a trusted application acting on their behalf.”

Rip It Up and Start Again: That this is still being debated is something of a miracle. The Trump administration initially sided with the banking industry and suggested it would withdraw the rule. But the president has also billed himself as friendly to the fintech and crypto sectors, which he courted during the campaign. That’s why the CFPB’s 180 left observers wondering if the decision to write a new rule was a sign of the sectors’ influence with the White House. Only time will tell, and for the next two months, you can tell the regulator what you think.