Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo Co., is a self-proclaimed Apple Inc. (AAPL) fan. He carries an iPhone and uses a Mac laptop. So when Mr. Iwata says Nintendo and Apple aren’t competitors, he should know what he’s talking about.

Nintendo, whose gadgets and software dominate the portable-videogame market, faces the greatest risk from the emergence of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch as gaming platforms. But Mr. Iwata says attempts to create a rivalry between the two companies make him “uncomfortable,” because he says it isn’t true. He argues the companies appeal to different consumers.

Yet Apple has made clear that it intends to go after Nintendo’s turf.

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At its media event in early September, Apple (AAPL) threw down the gauntlet to Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. (SNE). Dedicated gaming gadgets like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable “seemed so cool,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, but “they don’t stack up against the iPod touch.” Now an industry research firm has come out with numbers that back up Apple’s challenge.

A study by DFC Intelligence, released on Friday, predicts that games for the iPhone and iPod touch (an iPhone without the cellular capabilities) will be the principal drivers for growth in the overall portable and mobile gaming market in five years.

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Apple (AAPL) routinely touts the number of applications people have downloaded from the App Store, but it doesn’t say how much money it makes from the online clearinghouse for iPhone and iPod touch software. Bernstein Research has taken a whack at estimating App Store sales and, while the dollars are mere crumbs to Apple, they are growing quickly.

In a research report published Thursday, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates the App Store currently brings in $60 million to $110 million in quarterly revenue for Apple, figures that sound big until they are measured against Apple’s revenue last quarter of $8.34 billion. That’s just over one percent of total Apple revenue, if we use the high end of Sacconaghi’s App Store revenue estimate.

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Starbucks (SBUX) is launching a store-finding and menu-information application for the iPhone, and is testing a second app that will let customers use the phone as their Starbucks card.

The two apps are the coffee chain’s first for the iPhone and iPod touch. It has previously offered mobile services, such as the ability to send a text message to locate a nearby store, and has worked with Apple (AAPL) to make in-store songs available through iTunes.

The apps resulted from customer feedback it received via social-networking sites and My Starbucks Idea, the online community it launched last year, said Stephen Gillett, its chief information officer. “We think it’s really talking to our customers in new ways.”

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Tomorrow’s crisis today: Apple’s (AAPL) critics haven’t yet realized that the iPhone App Store has fueled millions in software development efforts to produce content exclusively tied to the company’s proprietary Cocoa Touch mobile platform. Is this a credible threat, and what is Apple’s real motive behind its iTunes rich media content strategy?

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One sign that Steve Jobs is back to his old self: He’s already sniping at rivals.

After Apple’s (AAPL) iPod launch event on Wednesday, the New York Times’ David Pogue asked the CEO whether he has doubts–as he’s expressed in the past–about the market for e-readers, especially Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle.

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So Apple (AAPL) announced a new iPod lineup on Wednesday.

I think they botched it, and in doing so, they showed very un-Apple-like cracks in the product lineup. Here’s why…

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Though technically he returned to work two months ago, it was as the host of Wednesday’s Apple (AAPL) music event that Steve Jobs publicly retook the reins of the company he founded.

Jobs was the first person to emerge on stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts here to open the now-annual September iPod introduction.

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When the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s student newspaper reported that incoming students of the journalism program would be required to purchase either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, it touched off a debate about whether universities can require specific tech purchases or whether certain companies can have a tech “monopoly” on campuses.

As it turns out, students won’t actually be punished or disciplined if they don’t buy one, though the school does recommend it–-the intention was to help out students who were on financial aid so that the cost of iPhone or an iPod could be included in a financial aid estimate. This summer the entire MU campus will be installing Tegrity, a class lecture recording program used by Stanford University and others, where they can download them for free on iTunes, and the journalism school thought students could use Apple (AAPL) iPhones or iPods “as a learning device.”

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Just when I was coming to terms with my ambivalence toward my Kindle e-book reader, Amazon and the publishers have gotten greedy.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the device since I bought my first one about 9 months ago. As a frequent traveler and voracious reader, I’ve found the Kindle to be nearly ideal. I never have fewer than a dozen books in its memory, and they’re always things I want to read.

As someone who believes we should often interact with media instead of passively consuming it, however, I don’t think much of the Kindle for any purpose other than reading a narrative. And given what a disaster “digital rights management” (DRM) is becoming for scholarship, culture and ultimately freedom, the device’s restrictions on how I can use what I’ve purchased are deeply troubling.

Still, I’ve been using it with some degree of satisfaction (as have enough other people to have helped boost Amazon’s stock price, so as the holder of several hundred shares I’m slightly better off in that way, too). The second-generation model improved nicely on the first–among other things, fixing some user-interface quirks, letting me charge it via a USB cable, and boosting the battery life.

The books I load onto the device fall generally under the casual entertainment category. I buy a Kindle book the way I buy a movie ticket (or did before going to theaters became such a crappy experience).

These are books, like most movies, that I’ll read or watch once and forget about. A physical book is more like a DVD–something I want to own and enjoy again and again.

So the kinds of books I tend to buy for the Kindle are the sort I’d often pick up at an airport newsstand, namely mysteries, thrillers and semi-trashy novels that I’d sometimes leave in hotels or airplane seat-back pockets once I’d finished them. (I also subscribe to several magazines, and consider it a favor not to see the advertising.)

Once I got accustomed to reading e-books, I started doing something that had been out of character in the analog era: buying new books that, in print, were available in hardcover only. Why? The price, typically $10 (okay, one penny less), was right. In fact, my new-book purchases soared.

But not for long. In recent weeks, Amazon (AMZN) or the publishers (or both) have done their best to deter me from buying the latest releases. Prices have gone up, way up.

Now, I often find books for which I’d have gladly paid $10 listed at $14 or $15. I save these to a list I keep on the Amazon website, called “Too expensive for Kindle,” and periodically check to see if the price has dropped. So far, not yet on any of these.

Hiking prices this way creates a bad deal for the customer. Amazon’s price for a new hardcover is typically just a couple of dollars higher. This means I could buy the hardcover, read it and donate it to my local library, and–after the tax deduction–come out ahead. I’d do even better taking the book to my local used-book store and getting cash.

But I almost never buy new hardcovers of books I don’t expect to reread or use as a reference, because a) I’m kind of cheap; and b) I can stand waiting for the paperback. So if prices stay high, I stay away.

Now, sellers have every right to charge more for popular books, especially when they’re new. This is basic supply and demand. But when the price only makes sense for people who consider the ultra-portability of an e-book paramount, that’s a turnoff for other potential buyers.

As a customer I also understand supply and demand. My demand is extremely elastic, and in this case it’s snapped.

Last week’s introduction of the Kindle DX was framed in many ways by different constituencies, but I was taken aback by the praise heaped on the device by several newspaper people, including the CEO of the New York Times Co. (NYT) (in which I also own a small amount of stock). Newspapers aren’t going to fix their considerable woes with Kindles, and anyone who thinks so lives in a fantasy world.

The DX, with its bigger screen, strikes me as potentially useful in several ways, possibly including the textbook function that Amazon hopes to jumpstart with the help of several universities (including the one that employs me). But if textbook publishers don’t radically cut prices on the outrageously expensive books they sell, they will find themselves creating a strong incentive for precisely what they don’t want: unauthorized copying.

I suspect the DX will prove most useful in more prosaic ways. For example, it could be a nearly ideal container and viewer for technical documentation–thick manuals that need periodic updating, where the cost of printing is prohibitive and the bulk of the books is daunting for the user.

Will all of this be made moot by the widely anticipated Apple (AAPL) “NetPad” or whatever it’s going to be called? I refer to a device that looks like a larger version of the iPod Touch, which would be a wonderful mobile multimedia player, among other likely capabilities.

I doubt it. If you enjoy severe eye strain, reading books on a back-lit, glossy display is just the ticket. The passive displays on Kindles, the Sony (SNE) e-reader and other such devices are much better for this kind of reading.

One size does not fit all in the emerging world of devices. Then again, one carry-on bag doesn’t hold all devices. For now, however, the Kindle has a place in mine.

COLUMBIA–Books, paper and pens are considered necessary school supplies. Now, so is an iPod touch or an iPhone for incoming freshmen at the MU School of Journalism.

Brian Brooks, associate dean of the Journalism School, said the idea is to turn the music player into a learning device.

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David Lin is traveling lighter for business lately. Ever since the software marketing exec bought an iPod Touch, he’s often able to leave his notebook computer behind. “My goal is to replace the laptop,” says Lin, vice-president for marketing at Denali Software, makers of electronic design-automation software.

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There’s been buzz about Apple’s (AAPL) interest in microprocessor designers ever since the company bought the Silicon Valley startup P.A. Semi last year. But there’s ample evidence that the company’s hiring of chip-heads started much earlier, and is continuing. The question: what is Apple going to do with these guys?

One goal of CEO Steve Jobs is pretty clear–developing powerful, energy-efficient microchips for its iPhone, iPod touch and other future devices. Postings by Apple’s recent hires on the Web site LinkedIn include plenty of people who previously worked at cellphone chip makers, such as Texas Instruments (TXN) and Qualcomm (QCOM).

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When Apple (AAPL) first started promoting applications for the iPhone, CEO Steve Jobs touted physician reference guides and other medical programs as an important category of software for the device. At least a tenth of the doctors in the U.S. concur with that view. Epocrates Inc., one of the big publishers of mobile electronic medical guides, estimates that 10 percent of physicians in the U.S. are actively using some version of Epocrates software for the iPhone. The company says there are 75,000 doctors that have installed an Epocrates application on their iPhone or iPod touch and synchronized it to get fresh medical content within the last six months.

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