Insurance giant buys out SW Ohio women's home after 2-year court battle over historic property

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  Protesters shown on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press

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  Kate Gallion, member of Allies of the Anna Louise Inn, rallies protesters on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately to get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press

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  Tatiana McCormick, 24, a former resident of the Anna Louise Inn, is pictured in front of a protest on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately to get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press

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  Jim Luken, 69, of Cincinnati, parodies Western & Southern CEO John Barrett during a protest on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press

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CINCINNATI –  A major insurance company has bought out a nonprofit home for struggling women in Cincinnati in a deal announced Monday, ending a bitter two-year court battle over the home's historic property in a beautiful downtown neighborhood.

Western & Southern Insurance Group bought the 104-year-old Anna Louise Inn for $4 million, according to a joint news release issued by the formerly acrimonious pair.

Under the deal, the women now living in the Anna Louise Inn will remain where they are for two years as a new facility for them is built.

Once they move out of the neighborhood, Western & Southern will be able to accomplish its long-standing goal of turning the old property into a boutique hotel.

"Our stance has consistently been that this could be a win-win, and now it is just that," said Western & Southern CEO John Barrett in a statement.

The very public dispute began several years ago when the nonprofit rejected an offer from Western & Southern and the insurer sued to stop planned renovations, leading to a protracted legal battle. Owners and residents of the Anna Louise long have derided Barrett's efforts to convert the home into a hotel, saying they amounted to corporate greed and arrogance because the home was not for sale and the women didn't want to leave.

"It's like someone coming up to you and saying, 'I want to buy your house' and you politely say it's not for sale, and they don't understand that not for sale means it's not for sale," Mary Carol Melton, executive vice president of the nonprofit that operates the inn, had said in October. "We really do believe enough is enough."

In the news release, a short statement from Melton said she was "very pleased that this has come to a mutually agreeable conclusion."

"Now, as we move forward, our women will have a beautiful new home and will continue to enjoy safe and affordable housing for many years to come," she said.

Monday's deal came less than a week after about 150 supporters of the Anna Louise protested outside a downtown courthouse, demanding that Western & Southern give up on buying the home and vowing that the Anna Louise would never give up.

The protest was one of many that have been held in the last two years. Supporters of the Anna Louise also have made an online video parody portraying a Western & Southern spokesman as a corporate fat cat hell-bent on kicking the women out of the Anna Louise, and even crashed the company's title yearly event, the Western & Southern Open.

As the world's top tennis players battled it out on the court this past summer, a plane flew overhead, trailing a banner calling Western & Southern a bunch of bullies.

At one point, the Anna Louise had considered an offer from Western & Southern to buy the property for $1.8 million, less than half its value. The inn decided against it after winning $12.6 million in federal and state tax credits for a renovation, a decision criticized by John Barrett as a taxpayer "bailout."

Days before the inn was to begin renovating, Western & Southern successfully sued to stop them, arguing that they broke zoning codes.

The Anna Louise had appealed and was rezoned but had been prevented from beginning renovations until the court fight was resolved. New arguments had been set for last week, but the home's deal with Western & Southern ends that.

The Anna Louise Inn has been housing low-income, single women in the same building since 1909, after President Howard Taft's brother, Charles P. Taft, built it for ambitious types pouring into Cincinnati to work as stenographers, bookkeepers and secretaries.

Over the years, the inn has become a haven for women looking to make a new start. Some residents are just getting out of foster care, some are between jobs, some have fled abusive relationships, and others are escaping lives as prostitutes and drug addicts. Several have lived there for decades.

During their fight to buy the Anna Louise, Barrett and others at Western & Southern repeatedly referred to the home's former prostitutes and said its residents just don't belong in the serene and lovely neighborhood.

They argued that a boutique hotel was much more suited to the area, and pointed to a University of Cincinnati study commissioned by Western & Southern that showed a hotel there could generate $355 million in economic impact over 30 years.

"It is the right thing to do for Cincinnati," Barrett wrote in an October editorial in The Cincinnati Enquirer. "No one loses with our proposal."

___

Follow Amanda Lee Myers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP

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T. Rex trouble: last dinosaur battle continues

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  Two decades ago, a fight over the Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue made headlines. Sue now resides at The Field Museum in Chicago.© The Field Museum

Almost a year ago, headlines proclaiming the sale of a largely complete T. rex-like dinosaur sparked an international custody battle that featured a confrontation at a public auction, a federal seizure of the fossils, charges related to smuggling against Eric Prokopi, the man who attempted to sell them and, finally, his guilty plea.

This case appears to be winding down. Prokopi is awaiting sentencing, and during a ceremony in New York City on Monday, Mongolia the country from which Prokopi admitted he took the ill-gotten fossils will take formal possession of the finds.

This is not the first time a fight over a prize dinosaur grabbed national attention and was followed by a criminal case.

More than 20 years ago, a team led by Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research discovered and excavated what was at the time the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found. The dinosaur, named Sue after the woman who first spotted its fossils, became the focus of an ownership dispute, which caught the attention of federal prosecutors. [Image Gallery: The Life of Tyrannosaurus Rex]

Sue's story ended at an auction in 1997, where the dinosaur sold for a landmark $8.36 million.

While the two cases share some obvious similarities, Larson expresses no sympathy for Prokopi, the fossil hunter and dealer at the center of the current case, describing it as "something very different from the Sue case."

Tyrannosaurus Sue's saga
Sue and Larson's story began in South Dakota in August 1990, when fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson discovered the T. rex in a cliff on a ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation.

'People need to make a living. [But] they need to do it legally, whether they agree with the law or not.'

- Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research

An ownership dispute involving the institute, the rancher and the tribe arose. This caught the attention of the U.S. Attorney's office in South Dakota, which was already investigating allegations the institute had taken fossils from public lands. The National Guard carted Sue away from the Black Hills Institute in Hill City, S.D., prompting an outcry from residents of the town, where the institute planned to establish a museum displaying the dinosaur, according to an account in Steve Fiffer's "Tyrannosaurus Sue" (W.H. Freeman and Company, 2000).

The feds later slapped Larson, his colleagues and the institute with an array of charges related to collecting and selling fossils. None of the charges concerned Sue, and only a handful resulted in convictions. [Image Gallery: Amazing Dinosaur Fossils]

Larson pleaded not guilty, but was convicted of two felonies for customs' violations for failing to report cash and traveler's checks, as well as two misdemeanors, for which he received a two-year prison term. He has since returned to paleontology and the helm of the Black Hills Institute. Larson discusses the legal case and the discovery of Sue and other T. rex specimens in the book "Rex Appeal" (Invisible Cities Press, 2004), co-authored with Kristin Donnan.

In 1997, the auction house Sotheby's sold Sue at a public auction. The sale was unprecedented, and an article in The New York Times contained speculation the specimen would fetch "upward of $1 million." In fact, the dinosaur sold for a total of $8.36 million to The Field Museum in Chicago.

A Mongolian dinosaur in America
Two decades later, Prokopi hoped to capitalize on the high prices that a prehistoric predator could attract. He imported rough, fossilized remains of a Tarbosaurus bataar from a dealer in England, prepared and mounted them. He placed the finished, 8-foot-tall and 24-foot-long Tarbosaurus bataar with Heritage Auctions for an auction scheduled to occur on May 20 last year. (Tarbosaurus was an Asian relative of the North American T. rex.)

News of the sale sparked protest from the Mongolian President, Elbegdorj Tsakhia,who said the specimen had likely been taken illegally from his country, whose laws designate all fossils as state property. Paleontologists supported this claim, saying that all nearly complete Tarbosaurus specimens have been recovered from a rock formation in Mongolia's share of the Gobi Desert. Federal prosecutors seized the Tarbosaurus, Prokopi fought to keep the dinosaur, and prosecutors charged him with crimes related to smuggling the Tarbosaurus and other fossils into the country.

"If you are exporting from a certain country, you should know the laws," Larson said. "It is just a standard thing everybody should do."

Although Mongolian regulations do not allow for the export of fossils excavated within the country's borders, fossils known to come from Mongolia began appearing on the market in the United States at least 10 years ago, Larson said.

In December, Prokopi pleaded guilty to charges related to fossil smuggling. The plea should help stop the plundering of Mongolian fossil sites, Larson said. "And that's a good thing."

Hurting science
These smuggled fossils arrive without crucial information about where they were found, creating problems if paleontologists want to study the remains. For example, researchers, including Larson, disagree on the identity of a small dinosaur sold to an American collector without a known origin.

If excavated in China, the dinosaur may be a miniature ancestor to T. rex and Tarbosaurus, one side argues. Meanwhile, Larson and others say these fossils are more likely to represent a young Tarbosaurus from Mongolia.

"The scientific conclusions are completely different depending on where it is from," Larson said.

Paleontology & capitalism
In a statement Prokopi released in June, he described federal prosecutors' involvement as an effort "to please a foreign government out for a political trophy." Later, in an interview for The New Yorker magazine conducted after his plea, Prokopi emphasized how common Tarbosaurus fossils are and suggested that the finds were exported from Mongolia with the sanction of that country's officials, in spite of its law.

Regardless of Prokopi's defense, both this case and Sue's call attention to the divide between academic and commercial paleontology. Some academics believe the sale of fossils harms science, although museums often acquire specimens from commercial paleontologists.

Prokopi addresses the hostile response that he said news of the Tarbosaurus' sale provoked, writing in his statement: "Do people really think everything they see in a museum was found and prepared by the people that work there? The truth is many spectacular finds in paleontology have been privately funded."

Although he works in the fossil business, Larson straddles the divide to some degree, collaborating with academic paleontologists on research and authoring scientific publications.

"I am a capitalist, too," he said. "I think it's very important. People need to make a living. [But] they need to do it legally, whether they agree with the law or not. If not, it hurts everybody. It hurts the science, it hurts the public who are cheated from not being able to see the specimen.

"[The fossils] deserve respect. They are part of the history of life on the planet, and they are not just something to tear apart because you can," he said.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Thou shalt not steal? Christian college, alum battle over domain name

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Cybersquatting is not a very Christian — or legal — thing to do.

That’s the premise behind a Florida college’s lawsuit against a former student who has allegedly committed trademark infringement and cybersquatting for more than a decade after registering and maintaining a website critical of Pensacola Christian College.

“Gage willfully infringed on PCC’s rights in the Pensacola Christian College mark by holding the domain name hostage, demanding that PCC pay him or a charity of his choice the sum of seventy-five thousand dollars in exchange for the transfer of the domain name,” according to the lawsuit filed on March 25 in the Florida Northern District Court.

"Unfortunately, PCC throttles the hearts, minds, and spirits of their students and makes no apology for the mess they make in the long run."

- Peter Gage, PensacolaChristianCollege.com

The website, pensacolachristiancollege.com, does provide a link to the official page of the 4,500-student college at pcci.edu, but continues to cause “irreparable injury” to the school, according to a lawsuit against graduate Peter Gage seeking $100,000 in damages.

Gage, of Spokane, Wash., graduated from the private school in 1996, five years before registering the website in 2001. Some two years later, Gage ceased all use of the website but continued to maintain its registration as recently as February, according to the lawsuit.

Gage, who declined to comment when reached by FoxNews.com on Tuesday, last updated the website in 2003 and bills it as “The Student Voice,” or the “unofficial” informational website for the Florida college. In a frequently asked questions section of the website, Gage details his “main problem” with PCC.

“The fact is, an institution trying to follow God (more or less) is going to have problems, hurt people, and make mistakes,” the website reads. “Many of us have probably seen churches try to enact biblical discipline only to have it end up in courts or with hurt families or misunderstandings, etc. We can't expect PCC to be perfect. Unfortunately, PCC throttles the hearts, minds, and spirits of their students and makes no apology for the mess they make in the long run. They won't even own up to it.”

Gage also dissuades potential students from attending the bible-centered institution.

“No, I do not think you should go to PCC,” the website reads. “That is my educated opinion, based upon my experience and the experience of thousands of others. The Christianity you are exposed to by the administration is not one you want to emulate throughout your life. The Christian emphasis, godly peer-pressure, and good academics can be found at numerous other good Christian colleges which don't put you through all the garbage.”

In 2001, PCC officials filed a complaint against Gage with the National Arbitration Forum, which oversees disputes regarding websites. Its decision, however, sided with Gage and dismissed PCC’s complaint, finding that the Washington state man clearly identified the site as an unofficial information portal and included a link to the school’s official website. Gage’s site also utilized a .com suffix rather than .edu, thus avoiding confusion that it was officially affiliated with PCC.

“The panel determine that respondent has rights and legitimate interests in respect of the domain name at issue,” according to the ruling. “Accordingly, the complaint is dismissed.”

Amy Glenn, a spokeswoman at the school, told FoxNews.com on Tuesday that a settlement may be forthcoming.

“Since that time, our attorney heard from Mr. Gage and discussions began regarding a resolution,” Glenn wrote in an email. “We are waiting on final confirmation since this is in the hands of the attorneys, but are hopeful that a favorable resolution will be reached quickly so we can take ownership of this site.”

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Top chefs battle for restaurant dominance in Las Vegas

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Las Vegas isn’t just a gambling and nightlife hotspot – its one of the best places in the world to get a meal.

For the world’s big-named chefs, vying to outdo each other with ever-more innovative restaurants and powerful brands, making a mark in Sin City is key to building on success. 

British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says he’s always looked to Vegas as one of the world’s culinary capitals.

"One of my first ambitions when I fell in love with this country more than 20 years ago was to absolutely nail a steak house here," says Ramsay.

Ramsay, who owns Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Paris, Gordon Ramsay Pub and Grill at Caesars and the newly opened BurGR at Planet Hollywood, says the Las Vegas market now is more competitive than any city in the world because every chef has an outlet there.

“There's no other city in the world that houses so many top chefs, so everyone raises the game. So the more chefs that come in, the higher the standards," he says.

While Ramsey has three locations, Wolgang Puck has seven, which include Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, CUT and Trattoria del Lupo. Puck was one of the first celebrity chef’s in Las Vegas, when he opened Spago more than 20 years ago.

"I'm really proud of being here for 20 years, big part of the community, knowing so many great people and Las Vegas is my second home," says Puck.

Hotels and casinos hope that big name chefs will help attract guests.  Topping the bill are chefs Susan Feniger and Sue Millikens’ Border Grill, Michael Mina’s Stripsteak and Hubert Keller’s Fleur.  Also attracting attention are Alain Ducasse’s Mix and Brian Massie’s Red Square.

Ramsay says that this five cooking shows, which air on FOX, bring people to the table (“Hell’s Kitchen” season 11 just kicked off with its premiere shot in Vegas). But it’s the food that keeps them coming back.

"I think the pressure on the chef today is far greater than ever before, their on more financial pressure, so TV exposure can help fill their dining rooms, providing the standard of the dining room is what they preached, they'll never have an issue."

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Apple vs. the world: In a battle of inches, can iPhone compete?

In smartphone land, everyone agrees: Bigger is better. Everyone except Apple.

Analysts expect the Cupertino-based company to release the iPhone 5S later this year, a refresh of last year’s model that will likely include minimal changes. That means the only new Apple phone in 2013 is likely to have a 4-inch display.

Meanwhile, every other phone is growing like a hormonal teen.

'I wish they had made a wider version [of the iPhone 5].'

- Apple founder Steve Wozniak

Larger phones dominated this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and Mobile World Congress; nearly every Android flagship released in 2013 will have a 5-inch display. Samsung, Sony, Asus and LG all have 5-inchers in the works. That single inch translates into almost 50 percent more screen real estate than the iPhone 5 -- more screen for watching videos, more for browsing the web, more for reading the latest e-book.

But why stop at 5-inches? Huawei unveiled a 6.1-inch beast in January. And even if these kinds of sizes are stretching the limits of traditional pockets, well-made “phablets” have been warmly received. Samsung’s 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2 reached 2 million in sales in less than a month. Half a year later it’s closing in on 10 million.

Samsung announced an 8-inch version of the tablet in late February. 

"It's a little too wide to hold comfortably in one hand, which is especially comical here because the international version of the Galaxy Note 8 will be usable as a phone," wrote PCMag.com's Sascha Segan. "Yes, you can hold it up to your head, in theory, although that's really silly. We tried. It was silly."

Still, users prefer bigger phones, and they become more active once they get them. Given the luxury of a bigger screen, browsing the web and watching videos becomes less tedious and more enjoyable, according to a study by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

When the iPhone first came out, it offered its customers just that. By transitioning to a touchscreen display and dropping the physical keyboard, Apple instantly doubled the size of its screen, transforming the smartphone from email to a true multimedia device. Today, the iPhone 5's screen is the smallest of all its competitors even as our mobile Internet needs have grown.

This leave Apple and its legion of fans as cramped as a basketball player flying coach. CEO Tim Cook reiterated the firm’s careful approach in January, explaining why the iPhone 5 has the “right” screen size for you thumb.

“The iPhone 5 offers a new Retina Display and is the most advanced display in the industry,” Cook said on the company’s 4Q earnings call. “It also provides a larger screen size without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use. We put a lot of thinking into screen size and we believe we have picked the right one.”

Following the release the phone in September, the company ran a series of ads to defend its philosophy.

Not everyone is convinced, however, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. “Part of me wishes Apple had not been so arrogant and feeling like "We're the only one with the right clue," he told TechCentral in an interview. "I wish they had made a wider version [of the iPhone 5].”

That leaves Apple users with two options: stick with the smaller screen or switch to Android and its myriad of size choices. "Not all people want the same thing,” Woz said. “A lot of people really like big screens.”

This may be one reason sales of the iPhone 5 have been decelerating faster than expected, according to a morning note by Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. Apple has cut its build orders by 25 percent to 30 million.

Even so, the iPhone 5 regained the mantle of number one smartphone in the world after outpacing the formidable Galaxy S3 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Growing phones, shrinking stocks

Apple’s market cap tumbled below the $400 billion threshold on Monday for the first time in over a year, allowing ExxonMobil to retake the top spot as the world’s most valuable company.

The decline of nearly 2 percent marks the latest stumble for Apple, which has now seen its stock plunge as much as 40 pecent since topping out at all-time highs of $705 back in September. Read more

The company also continues to get hammered on Wall Street, hitting a new 52-week low last week as it faces growing competition from all angles. Samsung will look to continue its good form when it reveals its latest Galaxy S phone in the coming weeks.

And it’s not just Android phones that Apple has to be worried about. BlackBerry new Z10 is reportedly outselling the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 at Glentel stores in Canada, which owns 330 retail outlets across the country. Half of those sales have been made by users switching from other platforms, mainly iPhone and Android.

Of course, there are still plenty of people who will agree with Cook’s assessment. There is such a thing as too big, for instance when HTC starts making small phone accessories for huge phones.

And with the historically secretive Apple, Cook’s words must be taken with a grain of salt. The late Steve Jobs famously bashed smaller tablets, claiming that the iPad was the perfect size. Soon after, Apple released the Mini. Rumors of a larger, cheaper iPhone to complement the impending 5S are already circulating.

For impatient users already burned once left disappointed after waiting for the 5, switching no longer means a compromise in quality as competitors have long caught up. What they will have, however, are options.

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Why Paul Ryan believes Democrats have won a battle but not the war

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is looking beyond Friday and the beginning of the sequestration.

In an interview I conducted with him on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Ryan told me he believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality.

"Mitt [Romney] and I shadowboxed against the theory of big government," he says, "while [President] Obama made all the great promises of what it delivered and used soaring rhetoric to sell it, but that will be different in a second term (when) the results start materializing."

Ryan believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality.

As one example, Ryan mentions the impact of the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare on seniors. He believes that when seniors begin to experience ObamaCare's negative effects it will "put us in a much better position not just to say, 'I told you so,' but to show there's a far better way than 15 people on a board appointed by the president making all these decisions that will ration your health care on top of all these ... price controls to providers that will restrict your access."

By the end of next year, Ryan believes, "...you'll see a lot of anxiety in the health care provider community that will damage access to health care for seniors and I think the bloom will come off the ObamaCare rose, such as it exists today (with) every additional year of implementation."

Ryan says health care providers are already telling some members of Congress about their "negative margins with ObamaCare kicking in" and how the law will either force them to close, or "they're going to stop taking people, or overcharge the private payers who increasingly will dump their employees into the ObamaCare program."

"The president said, 'if you like your plan you can keep it,'" Ryan said. "Not true. The president said this was going to improve Medicare. He said health care costs would go down. They've gone up.

Given all this, what will Ryan and the Republicans do when across-the-board spending cuts begin?

"Our job is to buy the country time," he tells me. "That means we need a down payment on the debt and deficits. We need to buy time for the bond markets to push off a debt crisis outside of the four-year window. We then go to the country with a real agenda of specific alternatives to this progressive experiment that's unfolding to win 2016 so we can actually fix this thing before it's too late."

He says he's not worried about polls that show a majority of the country will blame Republicans for the sequester: "Getting actual accomplishments by getting debt and deficits under control, stabilizing our debt to buy the country time so we don't have a debt crisis" will allow Republicans to "go to the country with a crystal clear choice that more clearly juxtapose(s) against the reality of big government under Obama is what we have to shoot for."

Ryan says the House next week will give the president "...some reprogramming authority to be able to direct cuts to lower priority areas from higher priority areas."

What if the Senate doesn't go along? "That's their choice," he says.

Ryan recalls how scare tactics failed in the 1996 debate over welfare reform when liberals lamented cuts to the welfare program that they believed would surely lead to poor children starving in the streets of America. Instead Clinton's welfare-to-work program made it possible for many low-income Americans to get jobs. Ryan calls the current GOP plan "Welfare Reform 2.0" and expects similar positive results by focusing on "improving prosperity, opportunity and individual responsibility."

Democrats have "won a battle, but not the war," Ryan says.

Is he optimistic he will win the war?

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."

Cal Thomas is America's most widely syndicated newspaper columnist and a Fox News contributor. Follow him on Twitter@CalThomas. Readers may e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.

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Android, iPhone? Nope. The new battle is to be number 3

Remember when the high-tech hype came from trade shows focused on consumer electronics and computers? Today, it's shifted to mobile phones and wireless devices, and Mobile World Congress currently underway in Barcelona.

And some of the most interesting new introductions are aimed not at well-heeled techno-geeks but at regular folks with budgets and responsibilities.

Just last year, analysts and reviewers were ridiculing the new wave of phablets or super phones being announced at the 2012 Mobile World Congress. Those are the oversized, big-screen smartphones that were even mocked on Nickelodeon's teen sitcom "iCarly." Samsung proved the critics wrong, ushering in an era of phones with 4.5-, 4.7-, and even 5-inch screens. 

The company recognized that since we rarely use phones to make phone calls any more, larger screens are better for surfing the Web, posting to Facebook, and finding your way to the nearest Starbucks.

However, this year the big news is the fight not to be number one in the market or even number two. Google and Apple have already nailed down those positions. No, the battle over the next 12 months is going to be for the number three spot.

Blackberry has already announced its touch-screen BlackBerry Z10 model, which will launch in the U.S. in a few weeks. But while the company still has a foothold with some business users, the Z10 is expected to be priced at around $200, with a contract commitment. That's in the same pricing wheelhouse as high-end Android and iOS handsets; tough competition indeed. Those prices may also subvert BlackBerry's goals as other companies rush to cut prices.

For example, another former star of the cell phone galaxy, Nokia, is introducing an inexpensive Windows Phone 8 at the show. The snazzy Lumia 520 will cost roughly €140 in Europe, without any subsidies. So that means when it rolls out in the U.S. later this year on T-Mobile it will be probably be free -- with a contract, of course.

And then there's the Chinese firm Huawei, which is rolling out its own inexpensive Windows Phone 8 model, the Ascend W1. Priced at €120 without a contract, it will doubtless be subsidized as a free phone in the U.S. (The company will try to burnish its brand with a high-end model, too, that supports the LTE Cat 4 high-speed wireless standard with a theoretical download speed of 150Mbps -- depending on the network.)

Can you get cheaper than free? Maybe.

Web browser killer, Mozilla, announced in Barcelona that it will introduce a slew of Firefox OS-based handsets around the world this year. Firefox is already the number two browser behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer; now it's taking aim at the smartphone market.

In its announcement, Firefox said more than a dozen companies have promised to support the new OS, including Sprint Nextel in the U.S. and Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA. LG and Huawei plan to make Firefox OS phones, and an early Alcatel model looked sleek and simple. Companies like Twitter have already outlined their plans to make specific apps for the phone.

Mozilla is a non-profit company. And the apps for Firefox OS will be based on HTML 5, the Web language that promises to break open Apple's App store and enable a new generation of software. It could also mean lower costs for developers and the rapid introduction of supporting apps.

A non-profit company competing in the smartphone space?! After the Firefox announcement, I'm betting people at Microsoft were spewing a stream of expletives. How can they compete for the third spot against a(nother) company that essentially gives away its software for free. They must be thinking, "What kind of a &%#@ business is this?"

It's a mature business, that's what it is. That means Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 may be too late. There are already a billion smartphones in use around the world. The competition now is how to put the technology into the hands of the next billion users. Price is likely to be the major factor.

Some analysts may see this trend as a familiar phenomena in mature electronics and technology markets: the race toward the bottom. But that's a good thing for consumers. You'll no longer have to pony up hundreds of dollars for a smartphone that's obsolete in six months. 

Now if only the major carriers would lower their prices, too.

Follow John R. Quain on Twitter @jqontech or find more tech coverage at J-Q.com.

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