So here’s the thing about the smartphone market: there are way too many of them.

The year 2010, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson asserted in a report this morning, “should be the year of the shakeout in smartphones.” He believes most of the market share and carrier focus will consolidate around three vendors. His view is that two of the winners “have effectively already been chosen.” In that group he includes Research In Motion (RIMM), “already a leader with its strong market presence” with a focus on the enterprise, and Apple (AAPL), driven by the App Store, iTunes and a strong Web browser.

So who will take the third slot?

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Intel (INTC) shares this afternoon are getting a lift from an upgrade by JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna from “Market Perform” to “Market Outperform,” with a $24 price target.

Following on a much-stronger-than-expected Q2 report last week, Intel, Gauna says, should continue to gain from better-than-expected results of its customers’ sales of notebook computers and server computers. Servers are benefitting form a shift to “cloud computing,” where more data processing is done via networks on a central computer, while notebooks may get a lift from Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7, when it comes out on October 22.

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Novatel (NVTL) shares are down hard this morning after JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson downgraded the stock to Market Underperform from Market Perform.

For the year through yesterday, Novatel shares had rallied 34.7 percent; Wilson notes that the wireless networking equipment company has gotten a boost from its role providing components to the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle 2 e-book reader. But Wilson says the Kindle 2 will contribute at most $10 million a quarter to Novatel’s revenue, “not enough to fill the hole left by the drop in demand in the PC and USB adapter business.” Novatel declined to talk about the Kindle on its post-earnings conference call last night, but did say that Foxconn, which manufactures the Kindle, was a 10 percent customer in Q4.

After the close yesterday, Novatel reported Q4 revenue of $65.1 million, slightly above the Street at $64.9 million, but down from $118 million a year ago. The company posted a non-GAAP loss of six cents a share, a penny worse than expected.

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Ariba (ARBA) shares are coming under pressure today following a cautionary note on the company this morning from JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens.

Walravens today repeated his Market Outperform rating on the stock, but cut his price target to $15 from $18. He also cut his EPS estimate for the September 2009 fiscal year to 61 cents from 70 cents; for FY 2010 he goes to 83 cents, from 91 cents.

“While we continue to believe that Ariba’s software solutions should fare relatively well in this macroeconomic environment, the services business may not hold up as well as we had previously believed,” he writes. Walravens notes that the company had guided to December quarter services revenue of $32 million to $34 million; roughly 40 percent of that relates to systems implementation. He notes that product upgrades are discretionary “and could easily be delayed by cautious customers.”

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Half-a-billion-dollar (market cap) Rightnow Technologies (RNOW), which sells software over the Web to automate customer support, could be threatened by this morning’s announcement from Salesforce.com (CRM) that it’s buying privately held Instranet for software to expand in the call center market, according to a report out today from JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens.

“Historically, Salesforce.com has not had an effective knowledge-base solution, giving RightNow a major advantage in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales cycles, which emphasize self-service,” writes Walravens.

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A quick update on my post yesterday regarding rumors that Extreme Networks (EXTR) might be acquired by privately held Enterasys.

In a research note yesterday, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson wrote that “sources suggested to us that at least one interest party has stepped forward to begin serious discussions with the company.” (He did not name any specific buyer.) Wilson contends that in the right hands, the networking equipment maker’s installed base, customers channel and intellectual property “could be worth considerably more than their current enterprise value.”

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