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The two technology firms have been locked in an acrimonious global battle over smartphone and tablet patents since April, and Apple has successfully blocked Samsung from selling its latest tablets in Germany and some smartphone models in the Netherlands.

The iPhone and iPad maker has also forced its rival to indefinitely delay launching its new Galaxy tablets in Australia, where a court will give its ruling this week.

Another loss could dent Samsung's ambitious attempt to close the gap with Apple in the global tablet market. The Galaxy gadgets, powered by Google's Android operating system are seen as the biggest challengers to Apple's mobile devices.

"Samsung's tablet business will be most affected and its chip business will also take a hit as Apple moves to diversify away from Samsung to the likes of Toshiba," said Nho Geun-chang, an analyst at HMC Investment Securities.

"But taking passive steps for fear of losing its biggest customer will slow down strong growth momentum at its telecoms business, which Samsung doesn't want to see as the business is set to become the biggest earnings generator this year and make up for weakening chip profits. It'll be a costly battle for Samsung."

The South Korean conglomerate supplied Apple with about $5.7 billion in components last year, some 4 percent of Samsung's total sales.

Apple's portion grew to 5.8 percent of Samsung's sales in the first quarter, driven by booming iPad and iPhone sales, which Samsung supplies chips for, along with Japan's Toshiba.

Apple and Samsung are scrapping for top spot in the smartphone market, having overtaken the market leader for the past decade, Finland's Nokia, in the second quarter.

Samsung still trails badly in tablet sales, where Apple racked up 14 million iPad sales in the first half, versus analysts' sales estimates of about 7.5 million Samsung tablet products for all of 2011.

Samsung and Apple will square off in a more significant U.S. court hearing next month about an injunction case.

Technology experts say Apple's intellectual property battle with Samsung Electronics is part of its broader strategy of using the courts to help cement the unassailable lead its iPad has in the tablet market.

Samsung is betting on its new tablets to close the gap with Apple and reach its target of increasing tablet sales by more than five folds this year.

SUPPLIER AND RIVAL

Analysts said what may become a longer-term challenge for Samsung, is losing chip orders from Apple.

"For Samsung, (the) biggest concern is reduced order from Apple. Without Apple's big backing, it would be difficult for Samsung to boost its chip market share sharply," said Nho at HMC.

"Apple is leveraging the fact that it's got alternative suppliers. They may offer inferior or more expensive components but it's something consumers barely notice and something Apple can successfully use to pressure Samsung."

Samsung's smartphone business has been growing furiously, powered by its flagship Galaxy lineups. Some analysts expect Samsung to overtake Apple as the world's No.1 smartphone vendor and report record profits in July-September, as it has much broader lineups than the high-end focused Apple.

Samsung's smartphone sales soared more than 500 percent in the second quarter, easily eclipsing Apple's 142 percent growth, though Apple sold about 1 million more units. Nokia sales fell 30 percent.

Samsung and Apple are suing each other in 9 countries over 20 cases. Apple first fired salvo in April by suing Samsung in a California court, saying the Galaxy lineup devices infringed on its mobile technology patents and design.

Samsung shot back with claims of its own.

Some analysts said Samsung's aggressive stance could help it gain some support from consumers.

"These legal battles are raising perception among consumers that Samsung is the only one capable of competing against Apple," said Choi Do-youn, an analyst at LIG Investment & Securities.

Despite the global court cases, both companies could end up settling the cases, HSBC said in a note.

"The most likely scenario is an out-of-court settlement, after a long-drawn IP battle... As in the case of the Nokia-Apple dispute, this issue too is likely to be settled out of the court, after a long drawn legal dispute," said HSBC analyst Daniel Kim.

(Editing by Anshuman Daga)

The 67-year-old German resigned on Saturday, with the UBS board appointing as his interim replacement Sergio Ermotti, who hails from Switzerland's Italian-speaking region of Ticino.

Ermotti, who joined UBS in April after having been passed over for the top job at Italian bank UniCredit, has been regarded as a likely candidate for further promotion since he joined UBS in April as head of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

A former Merrill Lynch head of global equity markets, the 51-year-old has experience both in investment banking and wealth management.

"Good news; obvious candidate" said Helvea analyst Peter Thorne.

The UBS board is looking at other candidates both inside and outside the bank to become the permanent new chief executive but Chairman Kaspar Villiger said at the weekend that Ermotti was a strong candidate.

Shares in UBS fell more than 10 percent after the scandal broke on September 15, trading at their lowest level since shortly after Gruebel took over in early 2009. However, they rose nearly 5 percent on Friday on hopes the board would decide on a major overhaul of the investment banking business.

At the top of Ermotti's to-do list for UBS is accelerating the overhaul, along with reviewing risk controls and overseeing an investigation into the huge trading loss.

Villiger said at the weekend he expects the revamp to take two to three years to complete and that he intends to remain chairman until 2013, when he is due to hand over the reins to ex-Bundesbank head Axel Weber.

Weber has already been serving as an informal advisor to the board while it searches for a new CEO and was in Singapore last week where UBS was holding a regular board meeting ahead of the UBS-sponsored Singapore Formula One motor racing Grand Prix.

But Villiger said the bank was sticking to plans for Weber to join the board next year and to take over as chairman in 2013.

"It's not optimal for the president and the chief executive to step down at the same time. This way Axel Weber has the chance to get up to speed, Villiger told newspaper the NZZ am Sonntag.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Just a few months ago, the prevailing wisdom was that growth was going through a "soft patch" caused by a combination of Japan's earthquake and unrest in the oil-producing Middle East. Once global supply chains got back to normal and oil prices receded, the second-half recovery could begin.

Judging from the tone among world finance leaders who gathered in Washington over the weekend, no one is buying that theory any more.

"The global economy has entered a dangerous phase, calling for exceptional vigilance, coordination and readiness to take bold action from members and the IMF alike," the International Monetary Fund's steering committee warned on Saturday.

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan spoke of a "somber mood" among policymakers. Financial markets priced in a growing risk that Greece may default, which could touch off a panic worse than what followed the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.

"The Lehman crisis was about rescuing a company. Now it involves a country's sovereign debt so in a sense, the situation is more severe," said Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi.

Yet the strongest statement Group of 20 officials could offer was a promise that, by November, euro area leaders will find a way to "increase the flexibility" of a financial stability fund widely considered inadequate to cope with a crisis which could engulf Italy or Spain.

"If a generous sovereign from Mars came down and paid off every penny of Greece's debt tomorrow, the fundamentals of the European crisis would not be altered," said former White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers.

J.P. Morgan economists blamed the renewed global weakness on a "crisis of competency." In a note to clients entitled, "Yes we can; no we won't," they argued that the economy was indeed shaking off the Japan quake effects -- until August, when Europe's debt strains intensified and the U.S. debt ceiling drama cast doubt on Washington's political will to address its own long-term budget needs.

Europe came under fresh pressure on Sunday to ramp up its crisis response when a top IMF official said the ECB was the only player big enough to "scare" financial markets, which have punished several euro zone countries.

The United States is having enough trouble solving its short-term budget problems. The next act could come as early as Monday, when Congress debates another spending bill. If lawmakers fail to act, a program that assists disaster victims could run out of money by Tuesday.

As for Europe, J.P. Morgan now expects a mild recession -- and this forecast assumes policymakers "move aggressively to provide a huge amount of support for banks and sovereigns."

If they don't, the downturn could be far more severe and no region would be immune.

LOSING TRACTION

There is already evidence the global economy is losing traction. A private survey of China's manufacturing sector, released last week, showed it probably contracted in September for a third consecutive month.

Official government data on factory activity is due on Saturday, and if it confirms a decline, that would deepen concerns about China's capacity to help prop up the world.

The latest batch of data from China points to still-strong domestic growth, although the global slowdown has taken a significant toll on exports.

Indeed, the August purchasing managers' survey showed overall orders increasing even as export orders contracted, suggesting China is still generating solid demand at home. If those figures deteriorate in Saturday's report, it may signal a sharper-than-expected slowdown in domestic activity.

Germany, which joins China atop the list of the world's biggest exporters, is looking even shakier. Its economy barely grew in the second quarter from the three months before, and confidence is fading fast.

The closely watched Ifo business climate index, due on Monday, is expected to record another decline after a precipitous drop in August.

OXYMORONS AND MORONS

With the G20 offering no promise of coordinated action, investor attention returns to what officials in the United States and Europe might do.

The next significant step may come in early October, when the European Central Bank holds a policy-setting meeting. Some economists are predicting a rate cut, which would mark an abrupt about-face for a central bank that was warning about inflation risks just a couple of months ago.

"It seems bizarre that the Fed has been easing monetary policy, partly on concerns about Europe, and yet the ECB, in the midst of a sovereign debt crisis, has hiked rates twice since April," said Nomura economist Paul Sheard.

As for fiscal policy, that looks likely to stay tight in both Europe and the United States -- much to the dismay of some economists who question how the economy can possibly pick up speed when the public sector is applying the brakes.

"The notion of expansionary fiscal contraction is oxymoronic and a bit moronic as well," said Summers, who the former White House economic adviser.

(Reporting by Emily Kaiser in Singapore)

Intense fear that global debt issues and stagnant growth cannot be resolved has pummeled market confidence in the past couple of months.

Earnings have been one of the market's few positives, coming in strong despite economic woes.

But analysts now are toning down double-digit growth targets for the rest of this year and next on the heels of a record second quarter.

A distressing signal came from FedEx Corp, the world's No. 2 package delivery company, which many on Wall Street look to as an economic bellwether. FedEx lowered its full-year profit outlook last week, citing high fuel costs and a struggling global economy.

Since July 1, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index has lost 15 percent. Forecasts for third-quarter earnings for the S&P 500 companies have slipped to 13.7 percent growth from 17 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. But many strategists say those estimates are still too high.

For next year, S&P 500 earnings-per-share estimates are eyeing $112, which would be a record.

"If that number is anywhere near real, order the champagne now," said Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at S&P.

Over the last few weeks, analysts have cut earnings estimates for S&P 500 companies across all sectors except technology. Financials are among the hardest hit.

Negative guidance from companies is also on the rise, outweighing positive guidance by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.

Estimates for the fourth quarter and 2012 are down slightly to around 15.4 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively, and could pull back further as analysts react to more guidance, as well as to critical economic data, including housing and jobs numbers, and a worsening debt crisis in the euro zone.

Profit growth could still be relatively strong for the season that kicks off in early October, and that could lift stocks, which sold off nearly every day last week on panic reminiscent of the financial meltdown in 2008.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended the week down 6.4 percent, its largest weekly percentage loss since October 2008, while the S&P 500 fell 6.6 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 5.3 percent for the week.

"The way things are going, we're going to be in a recession by the end of the fourth quarter," Barton Biggs, managing partner of New York-based Traxis Partners, said in an interview with Reuters Insider.

The mystery lies beyond the third quarter into next year. Strategists speculate that estimates may be inflated 5 percent to 15 percent as the market questions how far the cost slashing since the last recession can shield the bottom line.

FINANCIALS: THE ACHILLES' HEEL

Financials, worth more than 13 percent of the S&P 500 and the second-most influential group behind technology stocks, have been subjected to drastic cuts in earnings estimates.

"That's obviously the Achilles' heel of the market," said Robert Van Batenburg, head of equity research at Louis Capital in New York. "Investment banking is probably going to be very moribund, bank lending is still not existing, and there are no gains to be booked at all."

Banks are also suffering from worries about possible write-downs of euro-zone debt and less profitable lending due to the U.S. Federal Reserve's new measures to lower longer-term interest rates.

Financial institutions' shares have been dragged lower in recent days on renewed fears of exposure to European debt. Credit-default swaps, a measure of the cost of insurance against default on long-term debt, have been climbing.

"The wild card here is really the banks. That's really where the earnings for the S&P have been kind of jerked around in the last couple years," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co, in San Francisco.

Insurers are also very susceptible to a lower-rate environment, while energy and consumer discretionary sectors are vulnerable to see-sawing commodity prices and damaged confidence.

For the country's biggest insurers, the Fed's "Operation Twist," designed to stimulate credit for consumers and businesses, could threaten earnings for years to come. The problem is, returns on insurers' investment portfolios cannot keep pace with the obligations they have accumulated from torrid sales of annuities and life policies.

TECHS BUCK TREND

Tech, meanwhile, has been the sector where forecasts are rising behind powerhouses such as Apple, whose stock hit an all-time high last week.

The forecast for technology earnings for the full-year 2011 is 16.6 percent growth, compared with 2010, according to Thomson Reuters data released on Friday. In July, the forecast called for growth of 13.7 percent.

Yet even in this healthy sector, a cautionary tale came this week from chipmaker Xilinx, a component of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Xilinx dropped its sales forecast, citing weak industrial markets.

And after a relatively quiet few days on the economic calendar, the flow of data will pick up this week with reports on housing, factory activity, consumer spending and the broader economy. New home sales for August are due on Monday, followed by the consumer confidence index on Tuesday, durable goods orders for August on Wednesday, and the final reading on second-quarter GDP growth on Thursday.

On Friday, August personal income and spending data will come out, as well as the final reading on September consumer sentiment from the Reuters/University of Michigan surveys.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Jan Paschal)

The UBS board on Saturday accepted the resignation of its 67-year-old German-born chief executive and appointed as his interim replacement Sergio Ermotti, 51, who hails from Switzerland's Italian-speaking region of Ticino.

The board is looking at both internal and external candidates to fill the post permanently and Chairman Kaspar Villiger has said ex-Bundesbank head Axel Weber has already been involved in the CEO selection process as an independent advisor.

But Weber is still not due to take over as UBS's chairman until 2013, Villiger said.

Switzerland's biggest bank has asked the dapper, multi-lingual Ermotti, who was passed over for the CEO job at Italy's UniCredit, to speed up a scaling back of the investment bank.

"Revamping the bank will probably take the next two or three years until it's all completed," Villiger told the NZZ am Sonntag.

He also said that Ermotti, who joined UBS in April as head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, and has worked in London and New York, is a strong candidate to remain as CEO.

"He has lots of experience and brings a lot of what's needed to run the bank. I also think it's good that he's Swiss," Villiger said.

With the Swiss public losing its patience with UBS after a series of crippling crises, Ermotti's nationality may give him an edge over competitors and help him deal with politicians and regulators.

"He's a professional, open to the bureaucrats and Swiss concerns, but beyond any patronage," Der Sonntag quoted the Swiss financier Tito Tettamanti as saying.

Meanwhile Villiger, a former Swiss finance minister who also faced calls to resign over the scandal, said in a conference call with reporters on Saturday that the bank was sticking to plans for Weber to join the board next year and take over as chairman in 2013.

He reiterated that point on Sunday.

"It's not optimal for the president and the chief executive to step down at the same time. This way Axel Weber has the chance to get up to speed, Villiger told the NZZ.

"He'll also live in Switzerland and get to know the Helvetic characteristics. We see no reason to change this plan."

EARLY EXIT?

Gruebel, a banking industry veteran who helped turn around UBS's rival Credit Suisse, was brought out of retirement to revamp UBS after it almost collapsed in 2008 under the weight of more than $50 billion lost on toxic assets.

In a memo to staff Gruebel said the trading loss had shocked him deeply and that it was in the bank's interest to move ahead with someone new at the helm. Villiger said he had asked Gruebel to stay.

Gruebel initially wanted to stay on and decided to make his exit only in the course of board meetings in Singapore, when he realized some board members no longer backed him, the German-language SonntagsZeitung said, citing UBS insiders.

Opposition to Gruebel's strategy of a banking group focusing both on wealth management and investment banking had been rising in recent months, the newspaper said.

The Swiss parliament also looks set to enact new capital adequacy standards for big banks that go beyond the Basel III rules, and Gruebel made sharp criticisms of the plan earlier this year. UBS has said it will not pay a dividend as it seeks to shore up capital to comply with the new rules

Ermotti said on Saturday UBS will use its investment bank to service its private banking clients, scaling back but not exiting the fixed income business.

"Without restructuring, over half of UBS's capital base will be tied up in fixed income when investors want to buy a fabulous Swiss asset and wealth manager with a profitable but materially smaller brokerage operation," said Morgan Stanley analyst Huw van Steenis, adding UBS should refocus on areas such as equities and M&A.

Gruebel's decision to step down following the $2.3 billion loss was also welcomed by several Swiss politicians on Sunday and the center-left Social Democrats (SP) last week pushed for a ban on risky investment banking during a parliamentary session debating the 'Too Big To Fail' higher bank capital requirements.

The trading scandal showed risk controls were inadequate, and Gruebel's stepping down was a first step forward, prominent SP-member Susanne Leutenegger Oberholzer told local agency AWP.

For Pirmin Bischof of the center-right Christian Democrats, Gruebel's resignation and Ermotti's promotion meant UBS was keen to steer a new course.

"Gruebel couldn't identify with the 'Too Big To Fail' package," AWP quoted Bischof as saying, adding that Gruebel could sense the times were changing. "And for this new epoch he wasn't the right figure head."

(Additional reporting by Steve Slater and Philipp Halstrick; Editing by Greg Mahlich)