alternative to those supplied by another company that led to scores of incidents in which phones burned and melted, according to a person familiar with discussions between government agencies and the company.

The issue may have crept into the supply line after Samsung began replacing Note 7 phones that were equipped with batteries made by Samsung SDI Co, said the person, who wasn't authorised to speak publicly about the issue.

The SDI batteries were slightly too large for the phone, according to a US consumer-safety agency. Samsung is a major shareholder in Samsung SDI.

Market voices on:

The apparent new fault helps explain why Samsung would abruptly pull the plug on what was supposed to be its premier phone designed to compete against Apple Inc's iPhone 7. Amperex, a unit of Japan'sthe Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890), a last-ditch effort to prevent the so-called Chrome Colossus from driving rivals Ford and Chrysler into oblivion.

In fact, in 1976 the president of GM, Pete Estes, and his CEO, Tom Murphy, quietly set up what they called a "60-60-60" formula that involved GM's capturing 60 percent of the market while the stock hit $60 a share before the 60th birthdays of the two execs. Today, both market share and the stock price are roughly a third of those values.

It's not as if anyone hadn't warned them. In 1972 the late, much-admired former managing editor of this magazine, John Jerome, wrote The Death of the Automobile, in which he predicted massive troubles for the domestic industry. Four years before, I had written "The