Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Samsung and Apple were the only two smartphone manufacturers seeing growth in the United States, and that the pair were slowly eating away at their rivals’ market share. But when you take old-fashioned feature phones into account, the situation looks a little different.

New data from Counterpoint Research suggests that strong December sales have helped LG overtake Apple to claim the second-largest stake of the U.S. phone market. As you might expect, Samsung is still way ahead in first.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is about to get a little brother.

Samsung Mobile vice president JK Shin has confirmed to a Korean news outlet that the company will unveil the Galaxy Tab 8.0 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. The device, which is believed to be an iPad mini competitor, is expected to offer an 8-inch display with a 1280×800 resolution, coupled with a 1.6GHz quad-core processor.

Apple has made the iPhone more enterprise-friendly with almost every release of iOS, but some might say the company’s popular smartphone still isn’t ideal for business. When I say “some,” I mean Samsung. The Korean company just released a strange new advert to promote the enterprise features of its Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, and it couldn’t help but bash the iPhone and even BlackBerry devices at the same time.

The upcoming HTC M7 has been pictured out in the wild ahead of its official unveiling. Not only are these the clearest shots of the device we’ve seen to date, but they also show off its new Sense 5.0 user interface, and a new button arrangement beneath the display. This isn’t believed to be a final version of the device, but it’s likely to be the closest we’ll get until its official unveiling.

If you’ve recently purchased a Galaxy S III Mini and you’re disappointed it doesn’t have NFC connectivity, then look away now. Samsung has confirmed that a new version of the device, with NFC equipped, will be launched in the United Kingdom before the end of January. The update will give the Galaxy S III Mini Samsung’s S Beam system, as well as W-Fi Direct support.