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It’s been a week of contrasts for two of tech’s biggest players.

Last Wednesday Apple not only posted record sales of iPhones, smashing the 74 million mark in the three months from October to December.

It also managed to make a net profit of £12 billion, the biggest quarterly profit in global corporate history.

Meanwhile, its big name rival Samsung revealed that earnings from its smartphones and mobile division were down by 62% year on year.

While the Korean company did not say how many phones and tablets it had sold, it did confirm that its numbers were down compared to 2013.

This is all such a far cry from two years ago, when Samsung was in the ascendency and Apple’s ability to innovate was being called into question.

The Korean giant was sticking it to Apple on the shop floor and in the courtroom, turning itself into the world’s biggest mobile-maker and churning out new devices at an unerring rate.

But complacency, not to mention defeat in US courts and punishing fines over patent infringements, has left Samsung reeling.

In emerging markets, local suppliers are killing Samsung with their cheaper devices and similar services.

At the top end, Apple’s superior design quality and its decision to finally boost the size of its iPhones, coupled with Samsung’s distinctly average releases in the last 12 months, have put the squeeze on too.

Samsung is now in real danger of losing its place as the world’s premier phone manufacturer.

Its experiment with its own Tizen operating system seems doomed, meaning its reliance on Google’s Android is unlikely to end any time soon.

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Samsung will launch a new, entry–level handset running its own Tizen smartphone operating system in the New Year.

According to reports in Korea, the company will reveal the Samsung Z1 on January 18th, offering it for sale for around £58. The phone will be marketed in emerging markets, where Samsung is fighting to gain lost ground against Chinese mobile makers such as Xiaomi.

The release date was revealed by an anonymous Samsung staffer, speaking with the Korea Economic Daily. His revelations come as a leak showed off the Samsung Z1 for the first time at an Indian retailer event.

The handset is said to tote a 4–inch, 800 x 480 screen, dual–core processor, 4GB storage and dual SIM smarts. That’s all backed up Samsung’s latest version of Tizen.

The launch is something of a surprise, as the Korean giant canned the release of its Samsung Z Tizen phone back in the summer. At the time it was thought that it had realised that its proprietary OS could not compete with the likes of Google Android and Apple iOS. The Samsung Z1 could make an appearance at next month’s CES, which takes place in Las Vegas.

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The benchmark BSE Sensex extended losses by declining over 130 points in opening trad, as funds and investors indulged in booking profits in recent gainers amid a weak trend overseas.

The 30-share barometer, which had lost 54.53 points in the previous session, fell by 130.78 points, or 0.48 per cent, to 27,134.54.  All the sectoral indices, except healthcare, were trading  in negative zone with losses up to 0.97 per cent. Also, the broad-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty shed 36.15 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 8,116.80. Equity brokers said increased profit-booking by retail investors at higher levels amid weak trend on other Asian bourses following overnight losses on the US market dampened  trading sentiment.

Meanwhile, the rupee also weakened by 23 paise to 60.83 against the US currency in early trade today at the Interbank  Foreign Exchange market due to dollar's gains against other currencies overseas.

Among other Asian markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell by 1.06 per cent, while Japan's Nikkei moved down by 0.38 per cent in early trade. However, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.57 per cent lower in yesterday's trade. 

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The Galaxy Note 4 betters its Note 3 predecessor in every way.

From its eyeball-stroking QHD Super AMOLED screen to its metal frame, this device is a luxury cut above Samsung’s previous phablets and their plasticky builds.

That’s not all. The Galaxy Note 4 has an improved 16-megapixel camera and a beefed-up front-facing snapper with wide angle selfie mode.

And it takes advantage of some cool new note-taking features with its bundled S Pen and comes with a tweaked user interface that looks far better than any Google Android layover we’ve seen.

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The iPhone 6 looks set to come good on a recent slew of rumours regarding the device’s NFC capabilities. At last.

In a new, idiosyncratic post, journalist and renowned Apple-watcher John Gruber claims the company will indeed use the tech for mobile payments made from its new new handset.

Writing on his Daring Fireball site, Gruber stated: “I’ve been working on a new joke — about NFC and a new secure enclave where you can store your credit cards, so you can pay for things at brick and mortar retail stores just by taking out your iPhone, but only if it’s one of the new iPhones — but no one seems to get my sense of humor [sic].”

The ‘joke’ line refers to a recent Gruber Tweet in which he claimed he was just larking about Apple releasing a smartwatch next month, despite making that very prediction.

Gruber is known to have impeccable connections inside Apple, so it looks like these NFC plans are the real deal.