What about the company’s awesome new iPhone app, the one that will let you stream music directly to your handset? You know, like the one that Apple (AAPL) just approved for Spotify, the superhyped service you can’t even get in the U.S. yet?

Don’t hold your breath says Best Buy (BBY). That Napster app is not coming anytime soon. And neither are apps for Google’s (GOOG) Android platform or Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry.  And it’s because of those darn music labels. From a press note the company sent out this morning:

One of the most common questions Napster receives is, “When will you offer an iPhone app?” Well, Napster has created an iPhone application that allows subscribers to stream music on-demand to their iPhone—including personal playlists, albums and radio stations. You can imagine the company is also looking at streaming applications for several other mobile platforms as well (Blackberry, Android). However, due to the high licensing fees for streaming to a mobile phone, Napster has not yet submitted the iPhone app to Apple for approval or attempted to bring the application to market.

Now that’s an interesting approach–something akin to showing off a shiny new sled in a toy store window below a sign that reads “Not coming soon, not our fault.” Or that bank ad where the jerk takes the truck from the chubby kid.

I also don’t know if Napster’s explanation tells the whole story: Best Buy/Napster and the big labels already have an agreement that lets the company stream unlimited music to your PC for $5 a month. Just how much more would the company have to charge to accommodate the fees the labels want for mobile streaming? I’m supposed to talk with Napster folks later today, and if there’s anything I can pass along, I will.

UPDATE:  A little clarification from Napster president Brad Duea. His company’s position is that it doesn’t want to move about its $5 a month price, and that it would have to do so in order to offer streaming.

Why would it have to do that? Duea won’t spell it out. But henotes that RealNetworks’ (RNWK) Rhapsody, which has submitted an streaming music app to Apple, charges $15 a month for “on the go” service it already offers, and assumes it will charge the same for a service that works with the iPhone. Similarly, Spotify charges the equivalent of $16 a month for its premium service in the UK.

Of course, it’s possible that RealNetworks or Spotify will try subsidizing some of the cost for a mobile app in order to grab market share, and offer their iPhone/mobile services for something closer to Napster’s $5 fee.

That bit of data comes from a new NPD Group report, which says that smartphones market share reached 28 percent in Q2 of 2009, up 47 percent over the last year.

Which isn’t a shock, since the phones continue to get better and cheaper–remember when Apple’s (AAPL) first iPhone cost $600, all the way back in 2007? And all sorts of players, from mom-and-pop software developers to manufacturers like Palm, (PALM) have bet their business on the notion that one day not that far from now, nearly every phone will be a smartphone.

But in the meantime, “feature phones,” the plain vanilla handsets that you almost never read about on this site or any other tech-focused publication, continue to dominate the market, which continues to expand. NPD says sales volume increased 18 percent, revenue increased 18 percent, and the average sales price for new phones increased four percent, to $87 a pop.

[Image credit: cod_gabriel]

At least that’s the suggestion from consumer research service YouGov, which measures “brand perception” via an online panel. YouGov’s BrandIndex survey, which interviews 5,000 people a day and rates brand scores on a scale from 100 to minus-100, shows a big spike over the last couple months for BlackBerry. Adults 35-49 gave the brand a value score of 7.5 on July 21, but by August 4, that number increased to 18.

The BrandIndex people figure that jump stems from the introduction of the Tour, and particularly from the push that Verizon (VZ) has given it–Sprint (S) is also selling the handset, but is keeping that news to itself for the most part. Go to a Sprint store and try to find a Tour. It’s not easy!

But! Even while the oldsters thought more favorably about the BlackBerry, young folks seem to have turned on it: Adults 18-34 gave the brand a value score of 21.5 on July 7, but that number tumbled to 7.9 by August 4. Here’s the chart (click to enlarge):

What gives? One suggestion: Verizon’s decision to drop the prices for almost all of its smartphones (but not the Tour) to $99, which presumably makes the BlackBerry product look…I don’t know…more expensive? I’m not buying it.

Anyway, I’ve been in the old fogey demo for several years now, and I will say, the Tour appeals to me. But then again, that’s mostly because the noisy complaints I hear about the iPhone–primarily AT&T’s (T) lousy coverage and the machine’s puny battery–have kept me from making the leap to Apple (AAPL).

Still, for now I’m hemming and hawing, Hamlet style, on my big purchase. Perhaps I’ll write a post when I make a decision!

The one exception to the drought: Companies that have something, anything, to do with mobile. The Jordan, Edmiston Group says deal volume increased 45 percent over the last year, and the value of those deals leapt by 38 percent.

Granted, we’re talking about fairly small numbers to begin with–the bank counted 16 mobile deals in the first half of this year, compared to 11 a year ago–but it still seems telling, and right. We’ve been hearing about the inevitable rise of mobile as an advertising, content and commerce platform for years, but in the last year or so, this now seems plausible, due in large part to the adoption of smartphones from the likes of Research in Motion (RIMM), Apple (APPL), and, perhaps, even Palm (PALM).

And there are lots of marketers trying their best to ignore technology and keep their ads as dumb as possible. Example: Sprint’s email to me this morning trying to convince me to sign a new contract so I can snag a free “Katana Eclipse X” from Sanyo. Here’s the pitch (click to enlarge):

Nothing against the Katana Eclipse X, by the way. I’m sure it’s a fine phone. But here’s the thing: Sprint (S) has my email address because I am a customer. I’ve been one for a decade. And so Sprint knows that:

• I own a BlackBerry 8830, and that…
• I spend $100 a month for an all-you-can eat plan (plus another $60 a month for a broadband wireless card!), and that…
• My contract expires in a couple of weeks.

So if I were Sprint, I’d be trying very hard to convince me not to ditch the company for AT&T (T) and Apple’s (AAPL) new iPhone 3G S, which looks awesome.

And again, nothing against the Katana, which is apparently available in “Nightlife Black and Hypnotic Pink.” But it’s no BlackBerry, and it’s no iPhone. And it’s not a Pre, the phone that Sprint and Palm (PALM) are positioning  to compete against those two.

But I’ve yet to get an email from Sprint telling me that the Pre exists–perhaps the company hopes that I’ll be wowed by its new woman-friendly TV ads. Or what about Research in Motion’s (RIMM) new “Tour,” which is coming out this summer and looks great? Nope. Had to learn about that one by reading a blog.

So while I worry that I’ll regret typing this, here goes: Dear Sprint: You know where I live, what I own and how much I spend. You know I’m a free agent at the end of the month. Want to keep me? Start pitching.

The free program that Amazon (AMZN) created for Apple’s (AAPL) phone is a powerful tool, and from what I can tell, it works equally well on Research in Motion’s (RIMM) devices.

My BlackBerry 8830 doesn’t have a camera (maddeningly), so I can’t test out the photo-match feature, where users submit a picture of something to Amazon and the retailer tries to find something similar in its catalog.

But I can testify that it’s dismayingly easy to buy something using the app, which is why I’m on the hook for an Aretha Franklin CD headed my way right now.

Aside: Play with the Amazon app for more than a couple of minutes, and you can start to get an idea of how mobile advertising, currently in the “should be big one day” phase, could actually be big. Combine digitally delivered coupons–for stuff I actually want–with powerful e-commerce apps like these, and there might actually be a market for mobile ads.

Palm (PALM) said it lost 89 cents a share–or 86 cents a share after excluding one-time charges–on sales of $96 million. Those numbers are roughly what Wall Street had expected, since Palm had already warned earlier this month that revenues would be bad, and that it would experience “continued margin pressure from its legacy product lines” for a while longer. Smartphone revenue was $77.5 million, down 72 percent year-over-year.

But both Palm and Wall Street have pretty much shut the book on the old company, and its old phones, like the Treo. The future of the Palm, for better or worse, is the Pre, its to-be-released wonderphone that Palm is positioning as a competitor to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerrys.

But even here, Palm isn’t quite sure what to say about the phone it’s staked its future on. Last week, it had  to tell investors to disregard Palm investor Roger McNamee’s Pre hyperbole–specifically about its ability to unseat Apple’s iPhone.

CEO Jeff Bezos did, however, reiterate an interesting tweak that Amazon (AMZN) has in the works: At some point, it’s going let you read Kindle material on devices other than a Kindle. Bezos just mentioned this briefly, noting that you can now sync material between your old Kindle and your new Kindle, and “in the future, other mobile devices.”

That Bezos and his team took time to point this out on a slide during a brief launch presentation means that they’re definitely signaling at… something. But Amazon being Amazon, the company didn’t say anything else.

Last week, an Amazon spokesperson allowed that the company is “excited” about the idea. Today, I tried to get Amazon exec Ian Freed to elaborate, but he deflected my clever queries. See video below for evidence of my futility–it kicks in around a minute into the clip.

If he thinks customers don’t really feel that way, then perhaps he’s trying to build up as large an installed base as he can before e-books really do go mainstream so that he’ll have a lock-in like the one Apple ended up achieving with its iPod/iTunes system. But if that were the case, you’d figure he’d cut gadget prices dramatically to grab share.

Alternate theory: Bezos truly believes the Kindle is a unique platform and that anyone who reads on anything else is doing so and hating the experience. If that’s the case, then perhaps he starts providing Kindle titles in the near future–so that people can see just how unpleasant it is to read a book on any other device.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Meantime, here’s Amazon’s own video. Much more polished, but very long. Six minutes!

The new numbers come via Verizon’s Q4 report on earnings, which were OK, considering the brutal economy: The company reported earnings of $0.61 per share on revenues of $24.6 billion. Wall Street was fine with the earnings number, but had been expecting slightly higher revenues of $24.74 billion.

Verizon’s wireless growth was slower compared to the year before, when it added two million subs. Perhaps the company could have goosed those numbers with a better launch of its BlackBerry Storm, its would-be iPhone competitor from Research In Motion (RIMM). But despite a good-size media blitz, Verizon (VZ) was only able to move 500,000 units during the last quarter, according to reports.

So if those new customers aren’t buying iPhones–which are exclusive to Apple (AAPL) partner AT&T (T)–and they’re not buying Storms, then there’s a good chance they’re signing up for run-of-the-mill “feature phones.” That’s too bad: Verizon will take growth anywhere it can get it at this point, but it would rather sell high-end phones like the Storm, which generate lucrative data fees for the company.

I’ll let the gadget pros assess the operating system and the Pre, the first phone that will feature it, once they’ve actually had a chance to play with them. But my first impression is that the phone incorporates a lot of iPhone-like features and flourishes–primarily the multi-touch screen and gesture system for manipulating data–but boasts a keyboard. That’s promising.

I’ll also note that the Palm folks spent very little time on the phone’s audio-visual capabilities, so it doesn’t look like they’re trying to take on Apple (AAPL) there. And there was no talk about corporate email compatibility–they’re clearly not shooting for the hardcore BlackBerry user, either.

The biggest unknown is price, which went unmentioned during the demo. My assumption is that Palm (PALM) would try to take market share by coming in significantly lower than the $200 or so Apple wants for its iPhone. But when I ran that theory by Palm CEO Ed Colligan, he looked at me liked I’d peed on his rug. “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,” he asked, then walked away.

Translation: Bargain hunters are going to be disappointed.

EARLIER Real-time notes from the Palm press conference:

Here’s former Apple exec and current Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein, with the windup pitch: Not enough to just have a good phone. Need good applications, too. Now here’s CEO Ed Colligan explaining why Palm can pull this off: “Mobile is in our DNA. We do mobile. That’s all we do.”

Still in windup mode: Colligan explaining history of the smartphone. Now explaining that today’s smartphone user has lots of stuff on the Web.

This is a new platform, “from the ground up.” It will be cloud-centric, not desktop-centric. Name: “Palm WebOS.”

Built with developers in mind: “If you know HTML, CSS and javascript, you can develop applications for this platform. That’s it.”

Back to Rubinstein, to applause. “It is my pleasure to show you the new Palm Pre.” Big applause as he holds up a gadget with a 3.1-inch touchscreen display with multi-touch capabilities. First impression: Looks like an iPhone with love handles.

For the gearheads: EvDo, Wi-Fi, 8GB, GPS. Bluetooth, 3-megapixel camera with flash. (John Paczkowski chimes in via IM: “Dude, 3 megapixel camera with flash is KILLER. I don’t know why apple hasn’t done that.”) “By popular demand” can remove back and replace battery (knowing applause).

Slide-out QWERTY keyboard. (Applause).

Now for actual demo:

Contacts scroll back and forth with iPhone-like gestures. There’s also a “gesture area” that sits below the screen, so you can manipulate data, photos, etc., without touching screen. So far: This is an iPhone with an extra gesture area. This is a compliment, by the way. More gestures bells and whistles.

Now demoing a new “deck of cards” metaphor that replaces the desktop for getting access to stuff on your phone. “How’s that for some real newness, hmm?” More applause.

Running through email, contacts, IM. All connected via “synergy.” Unclear whether Palm is trying to trademark that term, but they’ve referred to it throughout the demo. One messaging app for all your applications: SMS text and IM threaded together.

More multi-touch, zooming, pinching, etc. Like an iPhone. Screen rotates if you turn device sideways. Like an iPhone. Can use “gesture area” to flick around screen without getting in way of screen. Unlike an iPhone.

Glancing discussion of music player. But not playing up audio-visual à la iPhone. No mention of video at all so far. Real focus has been on UI and playing cards metaphor.

Back to Rubinstein, showing off a very cool gadget: Touchstone, a magnetized conductive charger.

Colligan on how phone fits in marketplace: Not just for work. Not just for play–“can do video and music and its fun to play with.” But again, they haven’t highlighted video and music.

Exclusive launch partner: Sprint (S). I hope the EVDO works better than my Sprint broadband card is performing today. Here’s Sprint CEO Dan Hesse: Stressing how Pre will be comfortable for “first-time users.” You can see where this is going: Palm isn’t trying to convert iPhone (or BlackBerry) users here. It’s trying to nab someone who doesn’t have a smartphone yet.

Hesse citing praise from Gizmodo, a “very well-respected Web site” re download speeds. I’ve seen so many Dan Hesse TV ads that its a little disconcerting to see him live. But he looks pretty much the same in real time as he does in black and white, strolling around Manhattan in an overcoat.

Hesse promises to have Sprint staff available to help users figure out how to use this thing. “We expect that the Palm Pre is going to be an iconic and in-demand device.” Taking pre-registrations now at Sprint.com.

Colligan: Available first half of 2009, “as soon as possible.” Not certified yet.

Here’s a new partner: Facebook. COO Sheryl Sandberg takes the stage. Now this is synergy: Sandberg’s brother-in-law is Marc Bodnick, a top exec at Palm investor Elevation Partners. Unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing exclusive in the Facebook/Palm relationship, though; Sandberg simply promises that Facebook mobile will continue to evolve and that she’s looking forward to working with Palm.

Colligan wrapping up. Praising Rubinstein, whom he brings back on stage. And we’re done. Back in a minute.

(Bear with me as I cover this live–my Sprint broadband card is giving me a very narrow Web connection today. Here’s Palm’s official real-time take on its own product, via its own blog.)

Apple (AAPL), Research In Motion (RIMM) and Google (GOOG) are duking it out for consumers’ smartphone dollars this fall. But here’s an early winner: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, which has just landed a giant contract to push Google’s G1 phone for the next two days.

Wireless carrier T-Mobile, which is selling the phone in the U.S., is launching a big push on AOL’s Platform A ad network today. It has agreed to buy a billion impressions today and tomorrow, reports AdAge.

Reporter Michael Learmonth talks to industry sources who think the buy could cost T-Mobile around $1.5 million, which would work out to a cost per thousand of $1.50. Ad folks I talk to think that number sounds high, and guesstimate that the CPM will be closer to the $1 to $1.10 range.

But no matter what the number is, the campaign will be a win for AOL. Anything approaching $1 million over two days will be well-received at the company, which saw ad revenues drop six percent in the last quarter.

And the fact that AOL can offer an advertiser a billion impressions in two days also points out how the ad network business is supposed to work: Gather lots of Web sites and offer their combined inventory to advertisers, who can buy a lot of eyeballs at a discount. Now AOL just needs a lot more of these, fast.