Its revenues have shrunk, year-on-year, for 12 quarters in a row, and it has been making losses since 2002.

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This means the transistors - or tiny on-off switches that power its processors - can be shrunk in size.

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For instance, when a product's aluminum surface is shrunk or bent, the amount of on-order aluminum sheet metal changes instantly.

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Roughly a fifth of the people polled now bring a flask and food to work to save money, and the average time spent on lunch has shrunk from a far-from-leisurely 33 minutes to an indigestion-inducing 19 minutes over the same period.

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More broadly, Apple's move to put a shrunk-down version of its operating system, OS X, on the iPhone and the iPod Touch tells us that Apple sees portable, Web-friendly gizmos as a big part of its future.

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But that club has shrunk, in part because big-budget films these days are sold less on the appeal of an actor than on familiarity with the television programmes, books or comics that so often inspire them.

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It's a demand-driven commodity, where the reserve margin on the supply side has shrunk to under 2 million barrels per day.

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Because the private sector has shrunk, many families depend upon a pension or public-sector wage to put bread on the table.

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