Sprint officially announced that it will be expanding its LTE service to Brooklyn and The Bronx, which will be available for customers to use starting July 30.

Samsung made some executive changes at the highest level yesterday, appointing Gregory Lee as president of Samsung Telecommunications America (STA). Formerly the president and chief executive officer of Samsung Asia Pte Ltd, Lee will be responsible for “leading Samsung’s mobile business operations and strengthening the company’s leading position in the smartphone market in the U.S.”

While the U.S. market has been the biggest measure for success with handset makers over the last few years, all of that may soon change as the U.S. smartphone market quickly gets dwarfed by China and others.

According to a new report from ABI Research, China will displace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market by the end of 2013, but just five years later both India and Brazil will pass the U.S. too:

Google has just launched its Google Play gifts cards in Germany and France as it expands availability in Europe. The only supported regions previously were the United States and the United Kingdom.

MetroPCS is now ready to start selling devices that run on T-Mobile’s 3G HSPA+ network, which means this is the beginning of customer migration from MetroPCS to T-Mobile. The migration has begun ahead of schedule, coming just six weeks after the newly-appointed T-Mobile began trading.