The “iTunes LP” is just one of the many new iTunes features revealed yesterday during Apple’s announcement at their “It’s Only Rock and Roll”-themed event. But the iTunes LP, unlike the other new features which get to exist as simple and fun enhancements in iTunes 9, has a heavy burden on its shoulders.

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TomTom’s new app for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is getting attention for its high price tag of $99.99 but is garnering a positive first impression in the gadget blogosphere.

The app offers many of the features offered in its standalone GPS devices, including navigation help, trip-planning tools and multi-language support. “True, it’s not the first app offering turn-by-turn driving instructions for the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS–but it is from TomTom, an industry heavyweight that is finally delivering on years of rumor and speculation,” Thomas Ricker of Engadget writes.

On Silicon Alley Insider, Dan Frommer calls it “the $100 iPhone app you might actually buy,” adding, “Assuming you use it for more than 10 months, the one-time fee will end up being a better purchase than other similar apps, which run as $10 per month subscriptions.”

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The bill of materials for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS is comparable to model it replaced, according to market research firm iSuppli, which conducted a detailed tear-down of the new version of the phone.

According to iSuppli, the cost of materials for the 16 GB version of the iPhone is $172.46, plus another $6.50 in manufacturing costs, for a total production cost of $178.96. The firm notes that this is comparable to its estimate last year that the 8 GB iPhone 3G had a production cost of $174.33. (Note that both models are priced at $199.)

As you likely know already, the key hardware differentiators in the new model are video capture, an upgrade in the camera to 3 MP from 2 MP, and a built in digital compass.

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If you ask Apple (AAPL) or AT&T (T) how much the iPhone 3G S costs, they’ll emphasize two prices: $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB one, as Apple does here. It’s only in the fine print and disclaimers that they’ll explain that only new customers and those who aren’t on a contract (or nearing the end of one, at least) qualify for those deals.

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U.S. telecom executives are cautious about speaking their minds when it comes to tech heavyweights like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), but not Mikhail Shamolin, president of MTS, Russia’s largest cellphone company.

In an interview with Wall Street Journal editorial staff, he said the negotiations to bring the iPhone to Russia last fall were like “the negotiations of a junkie and a narcotics salesman,” because of the pent-up demand for the device.

But “Apple was operating on a take-it-or-leave-it strategy,” he said, resulting in a high price–about $1,000–that puts it out of reach for many Russians, since operators in the country don’t subsidize handsets.

The largest wireless operators in Russia all offer the iPhone 3G now, but they’ve only sold “a few hundred thousand” units, Mr. Shamolin said, because of the price tag and the dwindling supply of consumer financing amid the global financial crisis. Such credit “was one way to sell iPhones and that went away with the crisis,” Mr. Shamolin said.

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As the battle for the smartphone market heats up, comparisons abound between Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Storm, released in November, and Apple’s iPhone.

For starters, both devices boast a touchscreen, forgoing the buttons found on more conventional phones. But the more important comparison, from the bottom-line perspective, lies in which device carries a fatter margin. And on a cost-per-unit basis, the advantage for the moment appears to belong to Apple (AAPL). A new analysis of the BlackBerry Storm by market research firm iSuppli indicates the cost of components and manufacturing for RIM (RIMM) is slightly less than $203. By comparison, those costs for Apple’s iPhone 3G, the second iteration of the device, are less than $175.

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Now that Steve Jobs has bowed out of the annual (and possibly the last) Macworld Conference & Expo this week in San Francisco, there’s considerably less likelihood of any interesting, much less compelling, announcements from Apple at the event.

Too bad in a way, because lots of folks were hoping that Apple might announce its arrival, albeit late, to the netbook party.

“Late” in this case is no huge drawback. The market for netbooks, defined here as ultraportable but still full-functioning personal computers, has barely moved out of infancy. The early models from industry leaders like Asus have been solid demonstrations of what’s coming, and for some uses they are just fine.

Jobs has famously said Apple (AAPL) can’t make a netbook that isn’t crap, at least at the price point the market currently supports. But Apple doesn’t sell its other computers at the prices PC makers charge in most cases. Its excellent software and reasonably solid hardware have always earned a premium.

Apple could and should take the netbook genre forward in ways that will make these devices utterly compelling. To see where the company should go, we only need to look back a decade–to Apple’s Message Pad, a.k.a. the Newton–and then extrapolate forward in fairly obvious ways.

The Newton was far, far ahead of its time: essentially a large-screen PDA that came bundled with useful applications and boasted handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, the early versions of the handwriting feature were so clumsy, sparking ridicule that included a hilarious send-up in the Doonesbury comic strip, that the device’s reputation scarcely improved even though the software did.

For reasons that remain mysterious, Apple killed the project in 1998. I suspect (with absolutely no proof) that this may have had something to do with the company’s rapprochement with Microsoft the previous year, when Microsoft helped save Apple by agreeing to keep selling its Office software for the Mac.

The Newton technology and its progeny were absorbed into Apple, and pieces have emerged in various ways over the years. But the fundamental idea of the Newton was a smart one, and today’s processing power, storage, connectivity and software give it more value than ever.

The rumor mill has Apple offering up a larger-screen iPod Touch sometime this year. If that’s all it is, then Apple will have missed a big opportunity.

What might an Apple netbook–let’s call it the NewBook (not the NewtBook, which would make people think of Newt Gingrich)–look like? And what might we do with it? The possibilities dazzle.

First on the basic hardware front, the Apple NewBook would use Intel’s Atom processor or one of the emerging competitors from AMD and other chip companies. It would come with enough RAM and flash memory to be a reasonably serious computer, running OS X, and would boast a real keyboard plus a variety of standard ports. A built-in still and video camera, plus a microphone, would be highly useful as well.

Second, the larger screen would offer more than the touch screen in the iPhone and newer Mac laptops. Beyond using finger-driven gestures to navigate, it would have tablet features, including handwriting recognition, annotation and much more. (Several PC makers are expected to announce tablet-netbooks at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.)

Third, given that that our data increasingly live in the cloud and on home and office servers, the NewBook would contain several radios: fast Wi-Fi, of course, but also GPS and one or more connections to high-speed 3G mobile networks. (Apple being its typical control-freak self, unfortunately, the 3G would likely be limited to one carrier.)

What could we (and Apple) do with such a device? Lots.

Beyond standard personal computing, Apple’s netbook could be an excellent e-book. I have an Amazon Kindle, which I like a great deal (disclosure: I’m an Amazon shareholder), but Apple is in a perfect position to grab a major share of this quickly growing market. The company could even sell books through the iTunes Music Store, something it could do now given that the iPhone and iPod Touch can be used as adequate (though the screen’s too small) e-books today.

The Apple NewBook could also emerge as an ideal personal entertainment system and solid gaming device. The iPhone is fine for watching some kinds of video on airplanes, but I’d welcome a somewhat larger screen. For gamers, the iPhone is already becoming an intriguing platform, but the NewBook’s larger size and processing power would undoubtedly spark an aftermarket for hardware controllers and other input tools as well as great software.

I’m describing the kind of machine I’d gladly carry on short trips in lieu of my MacBook Pro, which I use at home and at the office. But before I adopted it for that kind of use, I’d need dead-easy, robust and absolutely reliable synchronization with the 15-inch laptop and whatever data I choose to keep in the cloud. Given the mess Apple has made of Mobile Me, my money would be on third-party developers.

There’s one thing I’d hope Apple would not do: lock down the netbook the way it’s locked down the iPhone and iPod Touch. By all means, Apple could and should use the iTunes store to sell third-party applications. But by no means should it force customers to jump through hoops to jailbreak the devices so they can use what they bought the way they want to use it.

Apple was late to the MP3 party, but it beat everyone else with a system that changed the game. Could we see a similar breakthrough with its netbook?

I’m tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The “This will work in the next version.” The “It’s in our road map.” The “Buy now and upgrade later.” The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn’t tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I’m tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic cancer in the last few years, starting with software from Google (GOOG) and others and ending up in almost every gadget and computer system around. We need a change.

Take the iPhone, for example, one of the most successful products in the history of consumer electronics. We like it, I love mine, but the fact is that the first generation was rushed out, lacking basic features that were added in later releases or are not here yet. Worse: The iPhone 3G was really broken.

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Apple’s (AAPL) new iPhone 3G is supposedly twice as fast as the old one, and its new App Store opens up all kinds of neat new mobile Internet services like baseball video and free streaming radio. Yet AT&T says iPhone 3G users are using less bandwidth than they anticipated.

The carrier expected a 5x growth in data consumption over the old iPhone, but it’s been closer to a 3x jump, AT&T (T) CTO John Donovan said this morning at a Goldman Sachs investor conference, Moconews notes.

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U.S. and European handset demand was “lackluster” in August, creating pressure on pricing, Pacific Crest’s James Faucette asserted in a research note this morning.

Faucette says says handset sell-through is up sequentially from July, but below expectations for the beginning of the back-to-school season. He adds that “price pressures on handsets continue to mount.” He notes that the mix of Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3G sales during August has shifted “decidedly” toward the $199, 8GB model. He says that will increase the difficulty of selling other smartphones “in the usual $250 to $300 range.”

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Complaints over dropped calls and choppy Web connections on Apple’s iPhone 3G have sparked a wave of debate in the blogosphere over the root cause of the problems. Two well-placed sources tell BusinessWeek.com the glitches are related to a chip inside Apple’s music-playing cell phone. The sources add that Apple (AAPL) plans to remedy the problems through a software upgrade rather than through a more disruptive step, such as a product recall.

The news reinforces analysis by Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities, who said in an Aug. 12 report that the problem involves a communications chip made by Munich-based Infineon Technologies (IFX). Faulty software on the chip causes problems when the iPhone needs to switch from wireless networks that allow for faster Web downloads to slower ones, the people say.

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Best Buy (BBY) shares are on the rise this morning on news that the company’s Best Buy Mobile stores will carry the Apple (AAPL) iPhone starting Sept. 7.

Pricing will be the same as it is through Apple and AT&T (T) stores: $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for 16GB, with a two-year AT&T service contract. Best Buy stores already sell iPods and Macs.

Meanwhile, Radio Shack (RSH) shares are sliding today. The retail chain already sells AT&T wireless service, but for now at least, isn’t going to be selling iPhones. Also hurting Radio Shack: news that the company has sold $325 million of 2.5 percent convertible senior notes due 2013.

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As sales of Apple 3G iPhones continue to grow, there are also increasing reports of trouble with 3G reception on the devices.

Certainly, demand is robust. Lehman’s Ben Reitzes today writes in a research note that “checks indicate” Apple (AAPL) iPhone demand in the fiscal fourth quarter ending September could top his current estimate of 3.8 million units. And he adds that this “bodes well for cash flow,” and for “an enhanced halo effect for Macs.”

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There was a certain irony Monday when Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney jacked up his sales forecast for the Kindle, the electronic book reader developed by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Ironic because in Silicon Valley–the capital of early-technology adopters and the bleeding-edge users of all things geek–actual sightings of the device are quite rare.

Most of the digerati around here are still obsessed with Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) latest 3G iPhone, which still draws lines wrapping around the block. By contrast, the Kindle is so scarcely spotted that whenever tech analyst Rob Enderele uses his, little crowds tend to gather around him.

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Back on June 26, Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha picked up coverage of Research In Motion (RIMM) with an Underperform rating, setting a $100 price target. So far, he’s looking like a genius: RIMM shares are since down 16 percent. His view was that RIMM’s EPS momentum is poised to slow over the next 12 months due to loss of market share in North America and pressures on gross margin. In particular, he asserted that the company was likely to lose share to Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) with the introduction of the iPhone 3G. Garcha set EPS estimates of $3.56 for the Feb. 2009 fiscal year, and $4.54 for FY 2010, below the Street at $3.81 and $5.41.

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