Customers can buy Apple's iPhone 4 or HTC's Droid Incredible for the same price, but the parts that make up the HTC smart phone cost about $18 less than the parts in its competitor, according to two reports from hardware analysis firm ISuppli.

The Droid Incredible, a Verizon Wireless phone designed for Google's Android software, costs $163.35 in parts, the analysts found after a three-month dissection and examination period. Factoring in manufacturing, the total cost is $172.25.

ISuppli's final iPhone 4 analysis pegs the price of parts at $181.85, with a total cost to make of $189.41, said a spokesman for ISuppli, which employs about 120 gadget experts with ties to the manufacturing industry.

These prices don't take into account shipping, software development, patent licensing or advertising.

Ad spending is a major difference between the two businesses. Apple takes on much of the financial burden associated with marketing its products, even for the iPhone, which is available exclusively on AT&T. Meanwhile, HTC has been aided by the advertising might of the Droid campaign, which belongs to Verizon.

But HTC has struggled to keep pace with product demand, amid shortages of the high-contrast AMOLED screen the Incredible sports, and Verizon has begun to shift its attention to Motorola's Droid X.

Apple's and HTC's stocks have each made gains since their signature $199 smart phones launched. Taiwan-based HTC skyrocketed this month, with shares increasing about 30%. On Thursday HTC reported a 33% increase in profit for the second quarter.

Several factors could explain why the pieces in Apple's device are more expensive than HTC's.

Sure, the Droid Incredible uses a younger screen technology that's in high demand, and has a higher-quality camera on the back. But the iPhone 4 uses an industrial-designed steel frame (which doubles as an antenna), a higher-resolution screen, a proprietary processor, a second camera on the front and a thinner body, requiring more compact organs.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Photo: HTC's Droid Incredible. Credit: Associated Press

With the price of Amazon's baseline Kindle's dropping to $139 today, the online retailer is throwing down the gauntlet in the e-reader wars.  A few months ago, when Apple's iPad debuted, the digerati wondered whether the faster, flashier, multi-function tablet would leave the Kindle looking like a relic.  But maybe it's not that simple, writes Jacket Copy blogger Carolyn Kellogg

"The real question may be whether consumers who want digital books want to read them on devices like the iPad, which serve many purposes, or on stand-alone e-reading devices," Kellogg writes.

(Read the whole post here.)

To be fair, however, I have heard tell of e-mail addicts using the Kindle as a BlackBerry.

-- David Sarno

Image courtesy Amazon.com Inc.

Kanye West went on a promotional tour of Silicon Valley this week, dropping into Facebook and Twitter to perform a cappella raps.

Needless to say, he was a hit as he works his way back into the spotlight after a year of keeping things on the down low. Talk about a status update.

The appearance at Twitter was particularly noteworthy because West had dissed the Internet service, blogging “Everything that Twitter offers, I need less of.”

West celebrated his new Twitter account at the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday and said he now wants the Twitter staff to delete the “Kanye West” impersonators who moved in on his celebrity Twitter turf in his absence. He has already amassed more than 230,000 followers. He is following no one.

West climbed on a table at Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters Tuesday to preview four tracks from his highly anticipated upcoming album. He opened with what he called a “fun rap.” “Kill the hypocrisy, this is an aristocracy.” The raps made it to YouTube within hours.

West blogged a thank you note to Facebook fans: "Many times in life I’ve had to deal with moments of doubt. And as it’s been a minute since I’ve performed any fresh material in front of an audience, this could’ve been one of those moments… but it wasn’t. Your energy was a gift so electric, so genuine, that it really helped me give my best. The energy was so inspiring I had to keep going."

-- Jessica Guynn

Thought your iPhone-toting friends were always buried in their phones? Seems Droid users are even more active Web surfers, according to a report released this week.

The average Verizon Wireless smart-phone owner gobbles up more of the network's wireless data each month than AT&T customers, according to a survey of 20,000 cellphone bills by Validas.

AT&T has the most smart-phone customers, thanks in no small part to being the exclusive carrier of Apple's iPhone. But Droids -- Verizon phones from Motorola and HTC running Google's Android software -- have catapulted the nation's largest cellphone carrier into the fast-growing smart-phone market.

Verizon's smart phones clock 421 megabytes a month, while AT&T's use 338 megabytes, according to the report.

These averages exclude the top-selling BlackBerry smart phones from Research In Motion because they tend to access far fewer Internet services than their Android and iPhone counterparts. Validas says it will release the full survey in September, but further details obtained by MSNBC from the company peg BlackBerry usage across all carriers below 50 megabytes a month.

Validas' pool of consumer's wireless billing information comes from its opt-in recommendation service for people seeking money-saving tips on their cellphone packages.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Left photo: Apple's iPhone for AT&T. Credit: Rpongsaj via Flickr. Right photo: Motorola's Droid for Verizon Wireless. Credit: Associated Press

A big knock on the ballooning size of mobile app marketplaces -- including Apple's 225,000-member App Store -- is that if you're an application developer, there aren't many ways to stand out in the crowd.  If your app is a bestseller, it can win a coveted spot on one of the category charts -- games, entertainment, music, etc -- and new apps get a few shining moments on the "new" list before they join the masses in numberless obscurity.

But Apple is offering one answer to that concern with a new feature specifically aimed at allowing application developers to advertise their apps -- from within other apps.  It's a special subset of its new iAd mobile advertising network called iAd for Developers.

To the end user, it's a rather simple concept. Say you're using an app to look up movie showtimes: If the app uses iAd, you might see a banner pop up for another app, movie-related or otherwise. You'd then be able to look at the basic information about the app, and if you wanted to, buy and download it without leaving the original movie app.

(Yes, there is an Escheresque quality to the idea of apps within ads within apps.)

These in-app app ads aren't the flashy rich-media kind Apple showed off for Nike or Toy Story 3, but they still give developers a new, pre-defined route to get more eyeballs on their software.  (App makers can also use keywords to exclude competitors from placing iAds in their apps).

Apple did not specify the rates that iPhone and iPad app developers would pay for the service, or whether they get a friendly discount. To use the service, developers first have to register and then speak to an iAd representative about their budget and the specifics of their campaign.

Details are also limited about how much control developers have in targeting their app ads to specific demographics or interest groups.  An FAQ page about the service notes that Apple will "optimize your campaign to ensure the right audience is viewing and interacting with your ads."

Facebook Inc. officially took the wraps off of its new question-and-answer feature Wednesday.

Millions of people already ask their friends questions on the site each day. This way users can get “a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics,” Blake Ross, a director of product management at Facebook, wrote in a company blog post.

The feature called Facebook Questions gives users a way to tap into the “collective knowledge” of more than 500 million people, Ross said.

The questions, and the answers, will be public so anyone on the Internet can see them. The only way to ask a question privately is by posing it as a status update on your profile. That openness is reminiscent of other services that let people ask and answer questions.

As we wrote earlier this week, major Internet players and start-ups are experimenting with how to quickly route people to the answers they want, some by connecting them with people with specific expertise or knowledge. Think of the effort as a way to give everyone their own personal search engine.

Facebook Questions is in beta and only available to a limited number of people. It will slowly roll out to everyone. Click on the “Ask Question” button on the homepage to ask questions or ask questions about your friends from their profiles. People can include photos or polls. They can also tag questions. Facebook will show the questions to people who are interested in related topics. Questions can be sorted by topic so you can explore areas of interest. For example, if you are taking a trip to Costa Rica, you can ask nearby surfing enthusiasts the best place to ride waves. You can also “follow” a topic to get a notification each time someone submits a new answer.

-- Jessica Guynn

As an age-old gag among Apple critics goes, Steve Jobs, with his marketing mastery, could sell a rock. (Just stick a lowercase "i" in the name.)

How would Apple advertise something as mundane as AA batteries? Come one, come all and see the magnificent Apple Battery Charger.

It's "better." It's "more environmentally friendly." It's "sleek, compact" and "high-performance." Best of all, it's "ready to use right out of the box."

Because they're batteries.

Amidst a slew of product releases on Tuesday, including some faster iMac and Mac Pro computers, a 27-inch monitor and Magic Trackpad accessory for desktops, Apple now has a rechargeable battery kit.

The product inspired the expected responses from Apple fan blogs: "Sets new standby usage benchmark" and "one of the most interesting product announcements today," said MacRumors; "deceptively cool," read a headline on AOL's Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Then there's this headline from CNET: "Apple rechargeables smarter than average AAs." Or this from PC World: "Apple Battery Charger Slays the Vampire."

What the latter is referring to is this line from Apple's marketing copy: "The Apple Battery Charger sets a new industry standard: it has one exdof the lowest standby power usage values -- or 'vampire draw' -- of any similar charger on the market."

Apple makes headphones, mice and keyboards that can be used with competitors' gadgets. And sure, Apple's peripherals rely on AA batteries, but the company generally doesn't branch into things as trivial as batteries. What's next, pens? Oh, never mind.

Leave it to Apple to make something so boring, something with so many competitors -- heard of Energizer or Duracell? (neither immediately responded for comment) -- sound so, well, exciting.

The Apple Store page goes on and on about how much "smarter," "fully loaded" and "best in class" these batteries are. At $29, Apple's charger, which comes with six batteries, isn't drastically more expensive than the competitors'.

We're just hoping to see a commercial with some colorful, dancing silhouettes replacing batteries in their TV remotes.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Image captured from the Apple Store website

Now shoppers can take their friends with them on Amazon.com.

The Internet retail giant took steps to make shopping more social Tuesday by letting Amazon shoppers connect their Amazon and Facebook accounts.

The move makes sense for Amazon, which got into the game early with recommendations based on purchases and searches and with reviews from other customers. But customers are much more likely to solicit advice from friends. Plus they can keep track of their friends’ birthdays and get gift suggestions based on what their friends have said they like on Facebook.

Social shopping is a pervasive trend this year as BeachMint, Polyvore, Blippy, Swipely and others look to make the experience more interactive. But not too interactive. What you buy on Amazon will stay on Amazon and won’t be shared on Facebook (unless you want to).

-- Jessica Guynn

A City Council review of Google Inc.'s $7.25-million contract to take over the city's e-mail system has been pushed back by eight days to August 4.

Council members were scheduled on Tuesday to review the status of the implementation, which was supposed to be finished by the end of June. The rollout of Google's Apps software to the city's 30,000 employees ran into delays as Google and the city negotiated over how to secure sensitive data from the Los Angeles Police Department and other city agencies.

LAPD officials have said they will not move their personnel to the Google system until all the safeguards are in place. That means the city will continue to pay for its older e-mail system -- up to $147,000 per quarter -- until the security requirements are met. 

A city technology official said Google has agreed to pay for the old licenses through November, when the implementation is expected to be completed.

Tuesday's agenda was to include updates about the progress of the security measures and the costs of the delays.

-- David Sarno

Who has the best answers? The Web wants to search your brain to find out.

Internet companies for years have been trying to figure out how to quickly answer questions typed in by users by guiding them to the most relevant pages. Now they are exploring services that route questions, even complex ones, to those best suited to answer them -- or to your friends. The idea is to give people information that can’t necessarily be found on the Web.

Among the Internet players working on this are Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and several high-profile start-ups such as Quora Inc., run by two engineers from Facebook. Their efforts show how much effort is going into improving Web search, such as offering videos, maps, books or photos in search results. But search engines still fall short in answering questions in all their semantic complexity.

Google in February paid $50 million to buy social search service Aardvark, founded by ex-Googlers. Google has not said what it plans to do with Aardvark, but the idea behind Aardvark is to connect people with one another.

Facebook is testing a question-and-answer service that will allow you to share even more with your friends by getting insight from them.

Search engine Ask.com also threw its hat into the ring Monday night when it unveiled a new service that, instead of links, supplies answers to subjective or complex questions, said Doug Leeds, president of Ask.com.

Ask.com will not use its search technology to just extract answers from the Web, it will also draw on the Ask.com community to answer questions where there are not yet any answers, Leeds said. The service will be available initially by invitation only.

This quest is not new. Ask.com had its roots in the idea that you should be able to ask any question and get an answer. Yahoo Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. also have tried to bake this kind of feature into their products for years. Answers.com uses published and crowd-sourced materials.

But the quality of answers has fallen short. Some think social media can change that.

A new generation of start-ups is looking for new ways to answer questions, none higher profile than Quora, which recently made its public debut after months of private testing.The Palo Alto company, which spun off from Facebook in April 2009, is run by two early Facebook engineers: Charlie Cheever and Adam D'Angelo. In a round of funding in March it was valued at about $87.5 million.

Quora encourages people to show off their expertise by answering questions on the site. It also routes questions to those best able to answer them. For example, someone recently wondered what Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz thought of the upcoming Facebook movie, "The Social Network." Moskovitz himself responded.

Like Facebook, people must use their real name on the site and register with their Facebook or Twitter account, which also means Quora can connect them to other people they know on the service.

Other start-ups exploring ways to surface knowledge are Fluther.com, which has the backing of investors Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, and PeerPong, which indexes people's knowledge and expertise.

"This whole notion of Q&A and human-powered search is really valuable and powerful, but not so far done in a way that is effective across the board," said Internet analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. "It's really about how they can provide targeted responses to questions people have. You have to provide a great experience every time. In most cases, there will be a reasonably good response on Google. They will have to be that much better."

-- Jessica Guynn