Sorry, Google. The apps (and by that we mean appetizers) won out.

At long last there is proof of Google’s (GOOG)  long-anticipated smartphone. Late last week, the online advertising giant started handing out an Android-powered phone to employees. While refusing to detail the specs, the official Google mobile blog refers to it as a “mobile lab.”

The Googley vagueness continues on the blog, where it is described as, “A device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities.”

Of course, the gadget-obsessed immediately ran to the Federal Communications Commission to get those specs, and photos have been popping up all over. So, we now (mostly) know that it is a sleek-looking touch-screen phone made by HTC, powered by a high-end Qualcomm (QCOM) processor and featuring the latest Android 2.1 OS. From the looks of things, this GSM phone could operate on any number of networks abroad, but seems destined at least for T-Mobile in the United States.

With all the Googlers eager to show off their new gizmos, and this, the calendric peak of the holiday party season, it was inevitable that in the Bay Area at least, the two would combine.  Sure enough, a friend attending a holiday party over the weekend in San Francisco with a number of Google folks making merry was presented with the new phone. “Mostly, I wanted to see the photo of the engagement ring that was on it,” she says, requesting anonymity. “It wasn’t an iPhone, and besides, there were pigs-in-a-blanket and these really good mini-cheeseburgers, and I was hungry, so I didn’t pay too much attention. “ So there you have it.

Table stakes: iPhone quality hardware

Discounting for a moment that this occurred in gadget-jaded Silicon Valley (and that the mini-cheeseburgers were really good), it does offer a point worth examining. Great hardware is the minimum starting point in the smartphone market these days, and it doesn’t get anyone’s blood racing by itself. As a piece of hardware, the Google phone, dubbed the Nexus One according to employees, had better be on par with an iPhone. If not, as we have seen time and again with would-be competitors, it will be a non-starter.

Let’s assume Google’s phone is tip-top in the hardware department. What sells smartphones these days has as much to do with the software running the phone and the applications available as the hardware. Again, Apple (AAPL) leads the pack by a wide margin with its mobile apps store.

Google’s open-source mobile OS Android has been getting mostly good reviews, especially in its latest incarnation running on Motorola’s (MOT) Droid phone. What Google needs to do, however, is get more Android phones out there to attract more developers and get the critical application mass it needs.

What has everyone most excited at the moment is the (rumored) prospect that Google will sell its Nexus One as an unlocked, carrier-agnostic piece of gear starting in January. Fine, as long as the phone is still relatively cheap. If Google comes out with a $500 unlocked phone, it will fade as quickly as all of Nokia’s similar unlocked and pricey efforts.

But if Google sells its phone contract-free for the same $199 the iPhone sells for (with a two-year AT&T (T) contract) it will have a monster on its hands. How could that happen? Google, rather than a carrier could subsidize the phone, and make up the cost via mobile advertising (it just bought AdMob), or maybe just take a hit to build a market. Google can certainly afford it. Either way, Android gets very huge, very fast, and that is what Google really wants.

Would that upset Google’s roster of current Android customers, including Motorola, Samsung and some of the wireless carriers? Sure it would, but this isn’t about the old-school wireless ecosystem, it’s about the mobile Web and Google’s designs to own it. If Google wants it, it needs to step up. If not? Those pigs-in-a-blanket sure look good.

The long-rumored gPhone has surfaced, but no one can agree on what it means

The purported Google phone. Photo: Cory O'Brien

Google (GOOG) announced on its mobile blog Saturday what dozens of staffers had already leaked: the company has given employees around the world free handsets running its Android mobile operating system. The idea, according to the official report, is to have Google's own people test various advanced features and offer feedback to the company's designers — a process known in the business as "dogfooding" (as in "eating your own dogfood").

Not surprisingly, given Google's financial clout and the power it wields over the Internet, the experiment has launched a storm of speculation about what it means. As we sort through the theories, we count at least nine ways of looking at the Google phone:

1. Google is in the process of designing an unlocked cellphone that it plans to sell directly to the public online — bypassing the mobile carriers and brick-and-mortar retailers — sometime next year. This is the line TechCrunch took first and the Wall Street Journal has picked up, citing unnamed sources "familiar with the matter."  This theory underlies much of the theorizing that follows.
2. Google has watched with dismay as smartphone makers tweak the Android OS to suit their needs, fragmenting the software ecosystem and scaring off developers. "By putting its stake in the ground," writes GigaOm's Om Malik, "the company is hoping that it doesn’t make the mistake that Microsoft made by dragging its feet in releasing Zune and ceding the market to Apple’s iPod."
3. Apple (AAPL) has finally met its match in a competitor that has the resources, the partners and the staying power to challenge the iPhone. This, finally, is the real iPhone killer.
4. The iPhone, despite the failure of AT&T's (T) network to keep up with bandwidth demands in high-profile urban markets, continues to sell like crazy. Google realizes it has to move fast or the game will be lost.
5. A Google phone sold without a subsidy from the mobile carriers would be prohibitively expensive — at least $400, and probably more like $500 or $600, according to Ian Betteridge's back of the envelope calculations. (See his comments here.) A carrier like T-Mobile (DT) could sell the same phone for a fraction of the price.
6. Google could subsidize the phone out of its own pocket, perhaps giving it away for free to drive more traffic to its revenue-producing ads — a strategy that's worked for nearly every other project in Google Labs.
7. If Google were to try to sell a smartphone below cost, the company would be facing a 21st century version of the Microsoft (MSFT) antitrust trials, and the start of a long, slow decline.
8. Google is about to alienate the very hardware manufacturers it's counting on to carry the Android flag. Why would customers buy a Motorola (MOT) Droid, for example, when they could get the official Android smartphone from Google?
9. Google has no intention of making its own hardware. The so-called Google phone is actually  the HTC Passion (AKA Bravo), an Android 2.1 smartphone set for U.S. release by T-Mobile in January. The "dogfooding" exercise is exactly what Google said it was — a way to test a bunch of advanced Android features on a friendly user base before they go public.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Photo: Apple Inc.

[UPDATE: On Monday, Nov. 10, nearly a month later, Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2, an extensive update that fixed the guest-account bug and more than three dozen other Snow Leopard problems. For a full list, see here.]

Call it fallout from the Sidekick fiasco.

Having watched Microsoft (MSFT) go through a weekend from hell for wiping out the personal data of thousands of T-Mobile (DT) customers, Apple (AAPL) finally acknowledged a data-swallowing bug that Snow Leopard users have been complaining about since September.

"We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix," an Apple spokesperson told CNET's Erica Ogg on Monday.

According to several hundred messages on Apple's discussion boards, the Snow Leopard problem is triggered when users log in and out of an old Leopard guest account and then try to log back in to their regular account. One victim described the effect as follows:

"Not only did Snow Leopard wipe out ALL of my documents, my email accounts, my address book, it broke the dynamic spell checker in yahoo messenger, caused random problems with Safari, InDesign, and others, caused lockups, spinning beach balls, loud fans… and it was just getting worse. I am restoring Leopard (sans snow) as I write this." (link)

The Sidekick disaster is of a different magnitude — which may be why Apple is willing to have the two discussed in the same news cycle.

On Saturday, Microsoft and T-Mobile warned Sidekick owners that any data not saved on their devices may have been lost due to a massive server failure in Microsoft's Danger division. T-Mobile halted Sidekick sales and offered affected users a $100 rebate while it tried to recover the lost data.

In a note to clients issued Tuesday, Kaufman Bros.'s Shaw Wu suggested that as many as 1.5 million customers may now be "ripe for the picking" by Sidekick's competitors.

"We believe RIM, Apple and Palm are well positioned to gain customers," he writes. "Out of the three, we believe RIM may be best positioned as it is already at T-Mobile, has a physical keyboard that Sidekick users crave, and arguably has the industry's best and most secure platform for messaging and e-mail communications."

For entertaining — if somewhat biased — accounts of the problems plaguing Microsoft's Danger division, I recommend Daniel Eran Dilger's posts on AppleInsider and Roughly Drafted Magazine here, here and here.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

And a few things we don't love about Motorola's forthcoming Google-powered phone.

Droid does (and doesn't) wow our writer.

The Droid is a fierce phone. Motorola's newest smartphone has a number of features that match and even best its biggest competitor, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. It has a fast processor. It’s got a large display with almost double the resolution of the iPhone as well as a slide-out keyboard. And it’s got a five megapixel camera with flash and zoom and a video camera that renders your Flip camera unnecessary. Add to that a new sharp-edged form factor straight out of Star Trek. And the marketers have given their campaign a bunch of attitude with their “iDon’t” commercial that pits the Droid directly against the iPhone.

But is any of that going to be enough to woo iPhone fans to Motorola's new device? As I wrote in a September feature, the company has a lot riding on it. Thanks to a massive marketing push by Verizon Wireless (VZ), plenty of excitement is building for the Droid’s November 6 launch. But just a year ago there was a lot of similar hype around RIM's Storm, which was also going to take on the iPhone. Though initial sales were pretty good, the smartphone received lukewarm reviews.

Motorola's new offering will have to prove itself once the hype dies down. And with so many Android-powered devices coming to market in the next few months, it may be hard for the Droid, which Verizon Wireless will sell for $199 after an $100 rebate with a two-year contract, to stand out.

Fortune received a Droid to test this morning. I powered it up, and a monotone robotic voice uttered “Droid.” Here are five things I think Motorola (MOT) has done right with the Droid…and a couple features I miss.

1. THE NAME Motorola’s first smartphone had too many monikers. Launched on T-Mobile (DT) and powered by Google's (GOOG) Android, it was called the Cliq with Motoblur. The Cliq was the name of the phone and Motoblur was the social software. The launch event left some members confused, and minutes after, I asked him directly whether he thought the jumble of names had been confusing. Jha agreed it was confusing, saying, “The feedback is good but it has taken ten or fifteen minutes to have the ‘aha’ moment.” He said Motorola would improve, and it’s clear that with the launch of the Droid, it has. In one syllable, the “Droid” signals a new type of device.
2. THE KEYBOARD Motorola’s slide-out keyboard is durable and intuitive. It doesn’t have the loud click that the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, had. (Try checking your emails on the sly during a meeting, and that clicking sound will blow your cover.) A toggle pad to the right of the keyboard allows you to navigate much like a BlackBerry trackball. In fact it’s the keyboard that makes the device an attractive alternative to RIM’s BlackBerry for the enterprise market. On November 2, a Citigroup analyst made headlines for cutting his ratings on RIM (RIMM) while upgrading Motorola after he reviewed the Droid.
3. GOOGLE MAPS NAVIGATION The Droid is the first phone to have Android 2.0, the newest version of Google’s operating system. There is not a lot that differentiates it from the earlier version, but these few changes have a substantial impact. This new product is one example. It’s a free beta version of a new navigation service (like TomTom’s or Garmin’s (GRMN)) that offers realtime directions, turn by turn, with Google Maps. My colleague Jon Fortt just wrote about paying $70 for a similar application for his iPhone.
4. APPLICATIONS Sure, the iPhone has nearly 100,000 applications and right now the Android Market sports just a tenth of that. But quality matters more than quantity. And with so many Android devices expected to go on sale in the next year, many developers are taking resources away from other operating systems to invest in Android applications. Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer saw a major boost in users after his iPhone application was featured heavily in Apple’s initial advertising campaign for its App Store. He estimates he added 100,000 users to the site, which he sold to Intuit (INTU) this fall for $170 million. Because his application is so popular, many companies have approached him to develop for their operating systems. “ Microsoft approached me seven times, and they’d offer free support like dedicated engineers,” he says. But Patzer prefers to concentrate his resources. When Mint.com releases its Android application in March, it will be the only other operating system he plans to support. “I’ll get a lot of leverage with so many devices being released,” he explains. “And the programming language is fairly straightforward."
5. SEARCH One of only four buttons at the base of the Droid’ screen is the magnifying glass icon that denotes search. It searches both the Internet and your contacts to compile information. Hold the icon down for a couple of seconds and the phone will prompt you to speak your query. I tried this with several names and each time, the phone actually returned search results for the correct name on first pass.

There are a few things I’ve come to expect in a smartphone that are absent in the Droid. For one, there’s no pinch zoom. Also, there are no “send” and “end” keys. Instead, the Droid offers four new buttons at its base. In addition to the search key, there is a home button, a menu button, and a back button.

But what I miss most is purely aesthetic. It’s black and heavy and sharp-edged. A smartphone is an incredibly personal device, and this one isn’t really my style.

Then again, last season I swore off horizontal stripes, and this year I’m wearing striped sweaters nearly every day.

The largest smartphone maker you've never heard of wants to capture the hearts – and dollars – of the U.S. consumer.

Motorola's (MOT) Droid phone is getting a ton of buzz, and that’s by design. Verizon Wireless (VZ) chief Marketing Officer John Stratton has said the marketing campaign behind its iPhone competitor will be the largest in its history.

But the Google (GOOG)-powered device isn't the only smartphone the company is likely to begin selling at the start of November. Though no one has officially confirmed, the carrier is expected to announce a second device that will also run on Google's  Android operating system at half the price: the HTC Droid Eris.

Haven’t heard of HTC? You aren't alone.

Since 1997, the Taiwanese smartphone maker has built a business out of creating "white label" devices for companies like T-Mobile (DT) and Palm (PALM) to brand and distribute. It’s been lucrative. After Apple (AAPL) and RIM (RIMM), which together command 73% of the North American market according to IDC, HTC ranks third. That's right: No. 3.

Though it only has 7% of the market, that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Until recently, HTC simply never put its name on phones it made. (For example, most of the devices represented by T-Mobile, which has six percent of the market, are made by HTC.)

From "white label" to consumer brand

But as the market heats up, HTC wants to be more than a white-label hardware provider. Jason MacKenzie, who runs HTC’s North America operations out of Seattle, calls it a “major shift in strategy.”

So last December, HTC bought the San Francisco-based design firm One & Co, so the designers could work more closely with its engineers. HTC’s latest devices sport the company’s logo. And this fall, HTC made its largest investment ever, pouring millions of dollars into an ad campaign that includes everything from bus stop billboards to prime-time TV spots that tout the slogan “HTC: quietly brilliant.” The first three will go live on October 29.

If HTC hopes to remain competitive in this market, this move is crucial. When the company made its brand debut last year, as the hardware device behind the T-Mobile G1 with Google, it was the only Android device on the market. But within the year, more than 20 Android devices will be go on sale. As is evident with the Motorola Droid, not all of them will get equal marketing treatment by the carriers.

Devices trump carriers

At the same time, consumers’ buying habits are changing. They no longer go to a preferred carrier like AT&T (T) or Verizon Wireless to review different phone models. Instead, they increasingly ask for phones by name, most often requesting an iPhone or a BlackBerry.

So will a “quietly brilliant” phone impress consumers enough to have them seeking out HTC devices over the iPhone? IDC analyst Ramon Llamas is skeptical. “I’ve got to tip my hat to these guys because the devices are very good,” he says. “But branding oneself takes time, you don’t get instant street cred.”

MacKenzie expects to spend time. He says the marketing investment is the first of many to come.

Verizon, Sybase and Quickcomm team up to manage corporations' mobility needs. Their service just scratches the surface

Chen wants to help your company go mobile. Photo: Sybase

Telecom giant Verizon (VZ) says it is launching a suite of services to help corporate IT departments manage their fleets of mobile devices. Corporate clients can hire Verizon to track their inventories of phones and monitor billings, add and drop devices as employees come and go, enforce security policies on phones and even remotely deliver applications and data to employees' handsets.

Verizon is partnering with software company Sybase (SY) and Quickcomm, which specializes in telecom-expense management, to offer a one-stop shop for companies looking to outsource mobile operations.

Analysts' reports suggest there's a need for such tools: Forrester Research estimates that by 2012 nearly three-fourths of workers worldwide, or nearly 400 million people, will be using mobile devices for work.

But the Verizon offering, which today focuses more on devices and enforcing a company's computer policies on mobile devices, addresses only part of the opportunity.

Mobile apps for enterprises – not as easy as it sounds

A growing number of companies are eager to move desktop applications to mobile devices, and may even want to develop new, custom applications for their businesses that take advantage of mobile networks.

Michael Marcellin, a vice president of product marketing for Verizon Business, says such application management services are under development. The company says it hopes to offer support for enterprise apps in 2010.

Delivering enterprise apps – customized or off-the-shelf – to a diverse global workforce is no easy task: Workers likely will have dozens of different handsets of varying vintages, and if the company operates in multiple countries, workers also will use different carriers' networks.

Adding to the complexity: The vendor of the application in question may or may not have a mobile version of their software. Or they may not be ready to move to delivering the software over the Internet cloud, which is the way many mobile workers want to access their applications.

Sybase CEO John Chen says his company has been working on these issues for some time now, as part of an effort to diversify the database-management company's revenue stream.

A few years ago the company began pursuing enterprise mobility in earnest with mobile device management and delivery of mobile messaging services. "Enterprise mobility opened up a whole new world for us in terms of who we partner with," Chen says. "Companies with big names and big reach are working with us, and it is creating (wireless) franchise value for Sybase."

In addition to Verizon, Chen says, the company has done wireless technology work for companies such as Samsung and Western Union (WU).

Sweet spot: Software cred + mobility experience

Chen says Sybase's experience in the software world coupled with its new focus on wireless makes it an ideal partner for companies seeking to migrate, say, SAP (SAP) solutions to a fleet of smartphones.  (SAP is a Sybase customer and partner.)

Indeed, Chen says his firm will be instrumental in Verizon's move into application management. "We can help them with that next piece, application enablement and launching new apps," he says. "We have shown a commitment to mobility, and we understand the enterprise."

Whether Sybase – and Verizon – succeed (especially in providing high-end application development and enhancement services) very much remains to be seen.

Verizon says the initial offerings from its mobility suite will be available later this month in the U.S and 19 European countries. The service is offered by Verizon Business and  Verizon Wireless, a joint venture with Vodafone (VOD).  But Verizon's Marcellin says the telco is happy to manage wireless operations for clients that have wireless service contracts with rivals AT&T (T), Sprint (S) or T-Mobile.

Gene Munster. Photo: Piper Jaffray

No cheap, mass-market iPhone — ever. A deal with Verizon or T-Mobile next summer. And a $30 – $40 subscription TV service on iTunes that could compete with cable TV within the next year.

Those are some of the predictions offered by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in a note to clients Monday that addressed 14 "unanswered questions" about Apple (AAPL). The exercise has become an annual tradition for Munster and can be a useful way to catch up on the news, although some of his answers are more surprising than others.

The three this year that interested us had to do with cheap iPhones, the end of AT&T (T) exclusivity and competing with cable television:

Will the iPhone remain exclusive at AT&T for the foreseeable future?

We believe Apple is slowly transitioning each country into which they sell the iPhone to a multi-carrier model. In other words, we expect Apple to add new iPhone carriers in the U.S. within the next year (likely with a new product launch next summer) … [Munster doesn't name carriers, but Verizon (VZ) and/or T-Mobile (DT) would be the logical candidates.] In France, the company now enjoys dramatically higher market share (in the 40% range vs. about 15% in ROW) than in countries with exclusive carrier agreements (such as AT&T in the U.S. where the iPhone has market share in the mid-teens). We believe Apple is seeing the increased unit sell-through more than offset the slightly (~10%) deteriorated economics per unit involved in non-exclusive agreements.

Will Apple ever make a cheap, mass-market phone?

We do not believe Apple will make a basic phone, or feature phone, to compete with rudimentary $10 models like those that dominate the cellphone market in India. … The screen resolution and all the apps made for the current iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPod touch also represent a barrier to Apple creating a smaller, cheaper device, one that likely could not run the apps developed for the current devices, and eliminating one of Apple's key features of the iPhone.

Would Apple ever consider a subscription video service through iTunes?

We continue to believe that Apple will eventually offer a monthly subscription for iTunes TV shows accessible on Apple TV, iPods, iPhones, and Macs/PCs. Apple could leverage its deep library of content with many network and cable channel content owners to provide unlimited access to a sub-library of its TV shows for a standard monthly fee ($30 to $40 per month). Such a product would effectively replace a consumer's monthly cable bill (~$85/month) and offer access to current and older episodes of select shows on select channels. While timing on the launch of such a product is very uncertain given the negotiations that would need to take place, Apple may work to launch it simultaneously with a new version of Apple TV, or updated Apple TV software within the next year.

The way consumers use Apple's mobile phone (i.e., constantly) means big headaches for carrier AT&T. And more smartphones are on the way.

Randall Stephenson, chairman, CEO, and president of AT&T, holds up his Apple iPhone

At the South by Southwest music, film, and interactive fest in Texas earlier this year, the iPhone was all the rage — and not in a good way.

The device proved so popular with Internet-addicted attendees that AT&T's wireless network in the city of Austin buckled under the strain, all but shutting down both voice and data service for many customers.

iPhone users bashed the phone company on Twitter and in blogs, and AT&T (T) had to haul in extra network equipment just to ease the gridlock.

As it turns out, smartphones are double-edged swords for phone operators. They attract big-spending customers who purchase highly profitable text-messaging and unlimited-data plans.

But they also tax networks designed for simpler times. Now the wireless providers hawking those Internet-enabled mobile devices are experiencing the digital equivalent of being proprietors of an all-you-can-eat buffet: It seems like the perfect business until the sumo wrestlers show up.

No carrier is feeling the pressure more than AT&T, the exclusive U.S. provider of the iPhone. Users of Apple's device are the hungriest mobile Internet consumers of all: Not only do they send e-mail messages and access the web, they also view maps and YouTube videos and download iTunes purchases.

Independent telecom analyst Chetan Sharma estimates that the typical wireless subscriber consumes 120 megabytes each month; typical iPhone owners use four times that.

Accommodating all that data is one challenge for operators such as AT&T, but the real issue with smartphones is that their users are always moving from one location to another, tapping into the network constantly, sometimes for a few seconds, other times for hours on end. And when a big group gathers — the lunch crowd in Manhattan, say, or South by Southwest revelers — the effect can be total gridlock.

"3G networks were not designed effectively for this kind of usage," says John Donovan, AT&T's chief technology officer, referring to the current generation of broadband wireless. "We fight the day-to-day guerrilla warfare as the customers move around." Not that AT&T is complaining. "The iPhone," adds spokesman Mark Siegel, "is a problem that other carriers would love to have."

New data guzzlers
And they soon will — sort of. AT&T is in the hot seat now, but an influx of Internet-savvy phones could easily strain other carriers' networks in the near future. By 2010, global mobile data traffic is expected to exceed 200 terabytes per month, six times last year's levels, according to Cisco Systems.

Why? One reason is that other phonemakers are catching on to the touchscreen craze that made the iPhone a hit. Users of phones with Google's Android operating system spend roughly as much time online as iPhone users, according to mobile advertising company AdMob.

To date, only two devices use the Android platform, including the HTC myTouch 3G launched by T-Mobile (DT) last month. But Android phones from Samsung, LG, and Motorola (MOT) are due in stores by early 2010. The data-oriented Palm Pre, which operates on Palm's (PALM) WebOS platform, is already on Sprint (S) and should be in Verizon stores early next year.

With all the money AT&T and other carriers are making from smartphones, why don't they simply upgrade their existing systems to handle more traffic? Because increasing wireless capacity is like adding lanes to a road; it takes months or years to get local permission to build new transmission towers.

Ultimately all carriers will move to faster next-generation networks that are designed for data traffic. But those so-called 4G systems won't be available nationwide for years.

In the meantime, carriers are likely to get pickier about the applications they'll allow on their networks. When Apple (AAPL) unveiled the latest iPhone software in June, developers collectively groaned after the company revealed that AT&T wouldn't immediately support two of the most exciting (and bandwidth-hungry) new features: MMS, which uses the text-messaging system to send media such as photos and video, and tethering, which allows a phone to share its Internet connection with a nearby computer. (AT&T says MMS will arrive at summer's end, when the network is deemed ready.)

Some carriers may try to offload data traffic. PCCW, the Hong Kong operator, has started using Wi-Fi hot spots to ease the load from smartphones and its digital TV service.

Pricing will probably change too. In private meetings, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has said that the most active 5% or so of data users are causing problems for the other 95%. AT&T is working on a revamped data plan whereby light data users would pay less, and heavy users would pay a premium rate — or leave.

A few carriers in Europe already have moved away from unlimited-use data plans. And once one U.S. operator makes the move, it is likely the others will follow suit — and the sumo wrestlers of wireless might have to do without the buffet.

In the dog days of summer last year, when balky downloads in cities across the U.S. were slowing iPhones to a crawl, Wired.com's Gadget Lab launched a survey of 3G network speeds to try to pinpoint the problem.

Gadget Lab invited iPhone owners all over the world to run a simple network test and submit their findings electronically.

After collating the results from 2,636 users — 62% of them in the U.S. — Wired concluded that the fault lay not with Apple's (AAPL) device, but with the U.S. carrier it had chosen to partner with, AT&T (T). See the results here.

Now, following rumors that Apple has been talking with Verizon (VZ), the Gadget Lab has decided to give it another try.

On Monday, it launched a second Battle of the Carriers, this time testing all the major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (DT) — and other 3G smartphones, including Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry.

The exercise only takes a few minutes. The instructions, available here, are fairly straightforward: you go to a Wired website on your phone, take the test, and then record your results on an interactive Zeemap. Just remember to click the "details" tab before you submit your entry, or else you end up — as I did the first time — sticking a blank entry on the map.

Below the fold: The 2008 results in map form.

AT&T's rivals have become more aggressive about their pricing, and that — paradoxically — could be good for Apple (AAPL), according to Kaufman Bros.' analyst Shaw Wu.

In a report to clients issued Monday, Wu notes that Sprint's (S) Boost Mobile unit now offers a $50 plan that includes unlimited talk, messaging, Web, and walkie-talkie service. Deutsche Telekom's (DT) T-Mobile, meanwhile, is test marketing a $50 unlimited voice plan plus $25 more for unlimited data/Internet.

So far, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are standing firm, charging a full $130 a month for unlimited voice and data.

That means that iPhone customers pay more than twice as much for all-they-can-mobile service as, say, T-Mobile customers using Google (GOOG) Android G1s.

How is that good for Apple's iPhone, whose fate is tied for now to AT&T — at least in the U.S. market?

According to Wu, evidence shows that it's the high cost of AT&T's monthly service plans, not the cost of the devices themselves, that is the limiting factor keeping iPhone sales from growing faster than they are. (See here.)

He believes Sprint and T-Mobile's price cuts will boost their lagging smartphone sales, which will in turn put pressure on AT&T and Verizon to cut their rates — to the ultimate benefit of iPhone owners.

"Overall," he writes, "we view lower service plan prices as positive as it should help smart phone adoption maintain its healthy pace, even in this fragile economy."

Wu is modeling Apple to sell 3 million iPhones in its second fiscal quarter, which ends in March, although recent checks with his supply-chain sources suggest that sales are tracking closer to 3.5 million.

He's sticking with a price target of $120 a share, arguing that concern over possible management changes are mostly priced in and that a 15X price multiple these days is "reasonable and conservative."

Apple closed Monday at $86.95, down 4.66% for the day.