How do the new smartphones stack up in terms of features, sticker price and total cost?

BillShrink, a website that offers free personalized analysis of cellphone, credit card and gas costs, has lined the phones up in an easy-to-read chart (click image to enlarge). It compares …

• Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone 3G S, which goes on sale next Friday
• Palm (PALM) Pre, which went on sale last Saturday
• HTC's G1, the first cellphone running on Google's (GOOG) Android platform

BillShrink's bottom line properly draws attention to the total cost of ownership over the life of a 2 year contract.

It shows the iPhone on AT&T (T) — at $3,799 for unlimited voice and messaging — to be most expensive by far: 20% more than the G1 on T-Mobile (DT) and 46% more than the Pre on Sprint (S).

[NOTE: An earlier version of the chart did not include the cost of the iPhone and Pre in their totals.]

But the chart also makes it clear that in several respects you get what you pay for. For example, the new (entry-level) iPhone comes with twice the Pre's memory capacity and 16 times the G1's (although the G1's memory can be expanded to at least 16GB).

And the chart actually underplays the vast advantage the Apple's U.S. App Store (with nearly 50,000 programs) has over Android's Marketplace (nearly 5,000) Palm's App Catalog (18).

As for the total cost of ownership, your mileage may vary. If you don't need unlimited voice and text messaging, the iPhone and the Pre can each be had for $69 per month, for a total cost of $1,878.76 over two years (taxes not included).

F0r more smartphone comparison tools, check out BillShrink.com.

After matching the iPhone nearly hit for hit in its first five months on the market, Google's (GOOG) Android has fallen behind the pace set by Apple's (AAPL) smartphone in terms of its presence on the Web, according to a report issued Monday.

"Android and the iPhone's browsing usage share upon launch were nearly identical for the first few months," the Web metrix firm Net Applications reports. "However, May numbers show that the Android mobile platform has fallen off the pace the iPhone set upon its launch." (link)

Stacking the iPhone's first six months on the market with Android's, the numbers look like this:

The acceleration in the iPhone's Month 6 (January 2007) occurred well before the device really took off with the launch of the iPhone 3G last summer. The first Android phone — the T-Mobile (DT) G1 — launched last October and had a strong Month 4, catching up to and even passing the iPhone's Month 4. But by Month 6 it had fallen badly behind.

Moreover, the iPhone's expanding Web presence shows no signs of slowing down. Its Internet share grew another 9.09% in May to reach 0.6% penetration, according to preliminary data released early Monday. Android's share has yet to break 0.08%.

"This," notes Net Applications, "may signal difficulty in moving beyond early adopters."

It may also signal difficulty for Palm (PALM), which is set to release its answer to the iPhone — the Palm Pre — later this week through Sprint (S). A strong launch is almost guaranteed, given the buzz that has surrounded the device since it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show last January and voted Best in Show.

But as Google and T-Mobile have learned, sustaining that buzz may not be so easy, especially with Apple expected to introduce a new iPhone, perhaps as early as next week.

The smartphone market is still in its early growth stage, however, and things may yet pick up for Android. The G2 — marketed as the HTC Magic — launched in Europe in April and made a strong U.S. debut last week at a Google developers conference, where free G2s were handed out to each of the hundreds of attendees. According to the New York Times, Google expects there to be at least 18 different Android phones on the market from eight or nine manufacturers before the end of the year.

According to its Web site, Net Applications’ monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to Web sites operated by its clients. The firm describes the results as “market shares,” but they do not actually measure share of market in the traditional sense of revenue or unit sales. They do, however, provide a consistent methodology by which to gauge operating system trends. (See Ars Technica for a good review of the different ways to measure market share.)

You can review Net Applications' May data here. The computer operating system data is free; unfortunately, a paid subscription is required to view its detailed mobile browsing data.

See also:

• How Apple and Google compete
• Competitors gaining on the iPhone
• Palm Pre launch plans leaked

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's five grand worth of Apple (AAPL) news in charts and lists released over the past couple of days.

1. Web Brands. Apple scored No. 10 in Nielson Online's ranking of the top Web brands based on the number of unique visitors each site drew in December 2008 — which isn't bad considering Apple.com's focus is so much narrower than the brands it's up against, like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Amazon (AMZN). (link)

2. Social Brands. The iPhone scored No. 1 — ahead even of its parent company at No. 3 — in the Vitrue 100, a new ranking launched this week by an Atlanta-based marketing company with a deliberately misspelled name. Vitrue's list ranks blue chip brands by how often they get mentioned in blogs, photo-sharing sites and such social media entities as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — presumably a measure of how large these names loom in the minds of an emerging category of early adopters.

3. Days to 1 Million. This comes from an Engadget reader named Noel F. who used published sales data to compare the rate at which the leading smartphones achieved the market penetration milestone of 1 million units. However, as Engadget's Tom Ricker notes, this leaves out the important factor of geographical footprint at launch. The Google Android G1, for example, launched only in the United States. The iPhone 3G was released simultaneously in 21 countries. (link)

4. Volume vs. Revenue. CounterNotions's Kontra uses data from GigaOm's Jose Fermoso to demonstrate that what matters is not how many smartphones you sell, but how much you make on each sale. Unfortunately, both writers' comparisons are a bit off since Apple's Q1 numbers include revenue and earnings not just from iPhones, but also from Macs, iPods and other goodies.

5. Stock Price. Finally, a glance at Apple's share price, which having suffered a thousand cuts in the past year finally picked up a little traction in the past two weeks.

Despite the hundreds of customers who queued up outside Verizon (VZ) stores early Friday to buy the Storm –  Research in Motion's hot new smartphone — the company is likely to miss its subscriber targets for the quarter that ends Nov. 29, according to a report issued Monday by Citigroup (C) analyst Jim Suva.

The Storm, RIM's (RIMM) answer to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, sold out almost immediately — and that's the problem, according to Suva.

Further investigation, he says, showed that the stores only received 40 to 100 units each, and that disappointed customers were told they could order online but wouldn't get their Storms until Dec. 15 — too late to count in RIM's third quarter sales.

The Storm's late release and its limited supply were among several factors that caused Suva to trim his estimate of new subscriptions this quarter from 2.9 million to 2.7 million. He also predicts Q3 earnings to come in at $0.85 per share on sales of $2.85 billion — well below the Street's consensus of $0.91 EPS on sales of $2.96 billion.

Among the other clouds on RIM's horizon, as Suva sees them:

• Lack of Wi-Fi on the Storm and reviews that were "generally positive, but by no means spectacular."
• The delayed launch of the Blackberry Bold at AT&T (T) and sales that, while "solid," seem to be primarily replacements rather than sales to new subscribers.
• The continued unavailability of the Bold in the United Kingdom, a key European market for RIM.
• The "tepid" response to the Kickstart clamshell phone at T-Mobile (DT), which seems to be more concerned with selling Google (GOOG) G1s than RIM BlackBerries.
• A shift in thinking within corporations, which in today's economic climate are starting to view the BlackBerry as a "nice to have" item rather than a "have to have."

See also BlackBerry Storm: The reviews are in and BlackBerry Storm vs. Apple iPhone.

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G and the G1 with Google (GOOG) unveiled on Tuesday have a lot in common.

Both are smart phones designed for users who want easier access to the Web than is offered by the current generation of RIM (RIMM) BlackBerries.

They share a lot of features — high res (320 x 480 pixel) color displays, motion sensors, support for GPS and Bluetooth 2.0, and venues for third-party apps. And they share some of the same flaws — both are locked to their respective networks, both lack video recording capability and full cut-and-paste text editing, to name just a few.

But there are real differences, which we've tried to summarize in the table below. If you spot something we've missed, let us know in the comment stream and we'll update the chart.

Detailed specs are available for the G1 here and the iPhone 3G here.

Several sites have posted side-by-side video comparisons of the two devices from the noisy demo room below Tuesday's press conference. Engadget, for example, compares the speed and responsiveness of the two Web browsers here.