Most such companies tweak their offerings in response to competition or demand.
Star, like other communications companies across Asia, is racing to develop new pager features -- in part a response to competition from increasingly affordable cellular-phone services.
At the start of this month APD was reduced for direct long-haul flights from Northern Ireland, in response to competition from services in the Irish Republic, which has an Air Travel Tax of just three euros to any destination.
Cadbury's is expecting a big response to the competition because young people are both fans of chocolate and text messaging.
If Apple were to make such an aggressive move it would almost certainly be in response to new competition from Samsung and Amazon.
"The response to this competition shows how many ideas are just waiting to happen, on, over or under the streets of London, " Hammond said in a statement.
Yet both will fall back to earth in 2013 as unit growth decelerates, margins come under pressure in response to intensifying competition, and earnings growth drops into the low single digits.
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"We are still waiting for a response, " Stefan Rating, spokesman for Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert, said in response to questions.
The latest fine is a record for a single company, imposed as what EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes calls "a reasonable response to a series of quite unreasonable actions".
But there is a danger in too much indiscriminate support: it would freeze the airlines in their present form, with their current capacity, and reduce competition, at a time when the right response is probably to shrink the industry.
The Paris-based exchange had originally planned to set up a rival trading platform for UK shares in response to the LSE's decision to begin trading Dutch shares in competition with its Amsterdam bourse.
In response to calls for an annual Office of Fair Trading report on the impact on competition, Ms Cooper said that the government had held talks with the OFT and recognised that Northern Rock should not "enjoy inappropriate unfair competition" with other banks or building societies.
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