In a holiday shopping season that got off to a better start than expected, Apple (AAPL) products sold particularly well — although not as well as last year, judging from sales at Amazon, America’s largest online retailer.

The iPod Touch was Amazon’s No. 1 best-selling electronics item Black Friday morning. By Sunday, however, it had dropped to No. 4 after the Kindle reader, a Canon (CAJ) Powershot camera and a Garmin (GRMN) GPS navigator.

All told, three of Amazon’s top 10 bestselling electronics items — and 10 of the top 25 — were made by Apple. By the end of the holiday shopping season last year, five of the top 10 were Apple’s (link).

In Amazon’s computer department, a $1,170 unibody MacBook was the No. 4 bestseller — after a $320 Asus EEE PC and a pair of Acer Aspires marked down to less than $400. Last Christmas Eve, the No. 1 spot was held by a white MacBook on sale for $1,219 after rebate (link). This year, the same computer selling on Amazon for $968 failed to make the top 25 bestseller list, although a more expensive model with a bigger hard drive came in at No. 13.

By Sunday, five of the top 25 computers on Amazon were MacBooks. According to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, Apple could have done better it had cut its prices a bit more steeply. (link) Discounts at the Apple store this year were in line with 2007, whereas price cutting among Apple’s resellers was considerably more aggressive. See here.

All in all, most analysts were surprised at how well this year’s Black Friday sales went off — the fatal trampling of a Long Island Wal-Mart worker and a fatal shoot-out at a California Toys “R” Us notwithstanding (link). Sales at U.S. retailers the day after Thanksgiving came in at $10.6 billion, 3% higher than last year’s, according to preliminary data from ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago-based research firm (link).

Online sales were particularly strong, according to Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY).

PayPal, the online payment service owned by eBay, reported nearly 34% more transactions this year compared with Black Friday 2007. PayPal said its sales numbers reflected a 12% overall rise in U.S. e-commerce for 2008. (link).

UPDATE: Comscore (SCOR) data for the first 28 days of the holiday e-shopping showed a considerably smaller Black Friday bump. According to Comscore’s Sunday press release:

“For the holiday season-to-date, $10.41 billion has been spent online, marking a 4-percent decline versus the corresponding days last year, while Black Friday saw $534 million in online spending, up 1 percent. For the combination of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, online sales were up 2 percent relative to last year.” (link)

The British Advertising Standards Authority is nothing if not literal-minded — which may be why Apple ads that hew closely to Steve Jobs’ standards of truth in advertising keep running into trouble in the United Kingdom.

Last summer the Authority banned an Apple TV ad with a voiceover that said “all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone.” Objection: there are many parts of the Internet requiring Flash and Java that you can’t get to with an iPhone. (see here)

On Wednesday, the ASA banned a second iPhone ad.

According to the BBC, 17 viewers complained that this particular “advert” showed an iPhone 3G downloading files and Web pages “really fast” — in less than a second — something you can apparently do in an editing room but not with an iPhone in the wild.

Judge for yourself. Although the ad can no longer be aired in Britain, we can show it here, via paidcontent.org:

You can read the ASA’s ruling, including Apple’s (AAPL) three paragraph defense, here.

[UPDATE: Apple has published its Black Friday sale prices, and while the savings on MacBooks and iPods are in line with last year's, there are steep discounts -- 50% and more -- on third party products. The resellers, meanwhile, are offering unually steep price cuts. See MacRumors, AppleInsider and Gizmodo for some of the best bargains. To see what shoppers ended up buying over the first weekend of holiday sales, see Apple's Black Friday bestsellers.]

You know times are tight when even Steve Jobs starts cutting prices.

Apple (AAPL), which keeps the tightest reins on list prices in the business, seems to have loosened them significantly this holiday season. Authorized resellers who normally wouldn’t dare chop a nickel off Apple’s suggested retail are cutting prices, offering rebates and plastering the Web with gaudy ads.

By Wednesday morning, the white MacBook that still lists for $999 on the Apple Store was selling for $899.99 at BestBuy, $899.95 at B&H Photo, $899.00 at Amazon and $868.99 at Club Mac and Mac Mall.

Apple store managers, meanwhile, are offering to match any advertised price — a policy they quietly followed in the past but now openly acknowledge. (see here)

And Apple.com has posted a pea-green teaser for a one-day Black Friday shopping event that promises unspecified bargains for shoppers willing to brave the crowds the day after Thanksgiving. Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu predicts Apple could be offering discounts of up to 15% on Macs, iPods and accessories, compared with 5%-10% in previous years. (see here)

It’s not a price war worthy of Crazie Eddie Antar, but it’s more retail aggressiveness than we’ve seen from Apple, which usually keeps its resellers on a short leash and limits its sales to Black Friday, Back to School and the occasional close-out.

We knew retailers were hurting this year. Now even Cupertino seems to be getting nervous.

Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray’s top Apple (AAPL) analyst, published one of his trademark “unanswered questions” reports early Tuesday morning. You can read the full text — with all 12 questions and answers — at AppleInsider here. Or you can read the bullet points:

• A netbook in 2009. Although Steve Jobs has said the company “doesn’t do cheap,” Munster thinks Apple could do well this year with a 11″ MacBook Air priced between $800 and $1,000. He doesn’t expect a tablet Mac before 2010.
• The $630 iPhone. That’s how much Munster believes Apple is getting, on average, from the carriers. He also believes that with falling component prices, Apple could lower its price to its partners by as much as $150 over the next six months and still maintain its profit margins.
• An iPhone in China. The phone’s international rollout is “still in its early stages,” says Munster, and he expects an announcement from one of the two big Chinese carriers (China Mobile, with 550 million subscribers, or China Unicom, with 128 million) within the next month or two.
• New iPhones. “Most investors believe the iPhone hardware will be the same throughout 2009 as it is today; we disagree,” writes Munster. Quoting Steve Jobs’ October remarks about not leaving a “price umbrella” below today’s iPhone, Munster is looking for new phones on both the low (below $199) and high (above $299) end.
• The shrinking iPod. Munster is modeling a 12% contraction in unit sales year to year for fiscal 2009. That said, he believes the iPod remains a key “entry point into the Apple device ecosystem.”
• iPhone gift cards. Because you now must activate new iPhones in store rather than at home, it’s hard to buy an iPhone as a gift. Munster suggests that Apple may take a page from AT&T’s (T) book and offer iPhone gift cards this holiday season. UPDATE: Reader Warren from Buffalo points out that Apple already offers iPhone gift cards.
• The last Apple bull. Despite the economic downturn and the fact that Apple was trading for $79.55 earlier this week – almost a two-year low — Munster is stubbornly sticking with his 2009 target of $250 a share.

Last we checked, the full catalog of Beatles songs was supposed to be available for sale on the iTunes Store before the end of 2008.

Well, it’s not happening this year, according to one of the band’s two surviving members, and for all we know it may never happen.

“The last word I got back was it’s stalled at the whole moment, the whole process,” Paul McCartney told reporters gathered Monday for the media launch of his latest album, Electric Arguments. (link)

Where’s Fake Steve Jobs when we need him?

Nobody was better at cutting through the posturing, lawyering and stonewalling by Apple Inc. (AAPL), the Beatles’ Apple Corps and EMI that have kept the world’s best-selling musical act off the world’s largest digital music store lo these many years. (EMI owns the rights to Beatles recordings, but must get permission from Apple Corps to release them in new formats.)

A year ago, McCartney told Billboard.com that the deal was all but signed. “The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning.” (link)

“Let me put that statement into American English,” Dan Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs) wrote at the time. “Paul wants more money.” (link)

Now, a year later, the sticking points seem to have multiplied.

At Monday’s press conference, Sir Paul was asked once again when the Beatles were coming to iTunes. Here, according to Billboard.biz, was his full reply:

“That is constantly being talked of, we’d like to do it,” said McCartney. “What happens is, when something’s as big as The Beatles, it’s heavy negotiations.

“We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. So the last word I got back was that it had stalled, the whole process.

“They [EMI] want something we’re not prepared to give them. Hey, sounds like the music business.

“It’s between EMI and The Beatles. What else is new.” (link)

EMI, in response, issued this statement:

“We have been working hard to secure agreement with Apple Corps. to make the Beatles’ legendary recording catalog available to fans in digital form. Unfortunately the various parties involved have been unable to reach agreement but we really hope everyone can make progress soon.” (link)

Translation: Paul wants more money.

Or maybe Yoko Ono is the problem. One of the classic entries in the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs — before Lyons gave it up to write full-time for Newsweek (and before Newsweek finally muzzled the Real Dan Lyons) — was the scene in which he imagined Jobs and Yoko trying to thrash out an agreement in John Lennon’s old apartment in Manhattan. (The deal falls apart on Yoko’s insistence that the band be billed as  “John Lennon and the Beatles” with Yoko listed as the fifth Beatle.) (link)

The irony is that the parties involved have dragged their heels for so long that much of the deal’s original value may have evaporated. Most everyone who cares about the Beatles has already filled their iPods with songs ripped from the CDs. Meanwhile, as Peter Kafka reports on All Things Digital, the boom in digital music sales seems to be slowing, which could make even the digital Beatles harder to sell. (link)

If Sir Paul is really waiting for a better offer, he — and the Beatles fans — could be waiting for a very long time.

[Photo: The Beatles' Feb. 7, 1964 New York press conference, courtesy of Apple Corps.]

Despite the hundreds of customers who queued up outside Verizon (VZ) stores early Friday to buy the Storm –  Research in Motion’s hot new smartphone — the company is likely to miss its subscriber targets for the quarter that ends Nov. 29, according to a report issued Monday by Citigroup (C) analyst Jim Suva.

The Storm, RIM’s (RIMM) answer to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, sold out almost immediately — and that’s the problem, according to Suva.

Further investigation, he says, showed that the stores only received 40 to 100 units each, and that disappointed customers were told they could order online but wouldn’t get their Storms until Dec. 15 — too late to count in RIM’s third quarter sales.

The Storm’s late release and its limited supply were among several factors that caused Suva to trim his estimate of new subscriptions this quarter from 2.9 million to 2.7 million. He also predicts Q3 earnings to come in at $0.85 per share on sales of $2.85 billion — well below the Street’s consensus of $0.91 EPS on sales of $2.96 billion.

Among the other clouds on RIM’s horizon, as Suva sees them:

• Lack of Wi-Fi on the Storm and reviews that were “generally positive, but by no means spectacular.”
• The delayed launch of the Blackberry Bold at AT&T (T) and sales that, while “solid,” seem to be primarily replacements rather than sales to new subscribers.
• The continued unavailability of the Bold in the United Kingdom, a key European market for RIM.
• The “tepid” response to the Kickstart clamshell phone at T-Mobile (DT), which seems to be more concerned with selling Google (GOOG) G1s than RIM BlackBerries.
• A shift in thinking within corporations, which in today’s economic climate are starting to view the BlackBerry as a “nice to have” item rather than a “have to have.”

See also BlackBerry Storm: The reviews are in and BlackBerry Storm vs. Apple iPhone.

Thank goodness for Andrea Jung.

Jung, the CEO of Avon Products (AVP), was elected to Apple’s (AAPL) board of directors last January (link), and on the strength of her presence in the board room, the company is ranked No. 262 in the fourth annual U.C. Davis census of women directors and executive officers in California’s 400 largest companies.

If it weren’t for Jung, Apple would be lumped with the 117 (29.2%) companies tied for last place, with no women at the top. As it is, her election to the board raised Apple’s percentage of female directors and executives to only 5.9%, well below the statewide average of 10.9%.

In a year in which a woman came this close to winning the highest public office in the land, the glass ceiling is very much intact in California — particularly in Silicon Valley.

As dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart notes in the U.C. Davis report issued last week, “little has changed” in the gender diversity of the state’s largest companies — despite the fanfare with which the university’s study has been greeted in past years.

Among this year’s findings:

• Almost half (48.5%) of California companies have no women executive officers and even fewer (46.8%) have female directors.
• The telecommunications sector has the lowest percentage (3.6%) of women directors; the pharmaceuticals sector has the highest percentage (14.6%).
• Only 2.4% of executive officers in the electronics sector are women.
• Among counties with at least 20 companies, the Bay Area has the county with the greatest number of women directors (San Francisco, 15.2%) as well as the county with the least, Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, 8.4%)

Although there is one woman on Apple’s 8-member board of directors, men make up its entire 11-member executive team.

For links to full U.C. Davis report, click here. For Fortune’s list of the 50 most powerful women in business, click here.

A major update to the iPhone’s firmware arrived at the stroke of midnight Thursday, surprising Apple (AAPL) watchers and taking just a little steam out of the Friday launch of Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm.

iPhone 2.2 contains dozens of fixes and improvements — most of which had been telegraphed in advance through leaks from the developer community. Apple’s handy checklist:

• Enhancements to Maps
  • Google Street View
  • public transit and walking directions
  • display address of dropped pins
  • share location via email
• Enhancements to Mail
  • resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of e-mail
  • improved formatting of wide HTML email
• improved stability and performance of Safari
• Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
• Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
• Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

No. 1 on that list — Google Street View — is the first new feature we tried out. It also happens to be the most conspicuous trick that Google (GOOG) Android phones performed that iPhones couldn’t.

Well, now they can. For example, here’s the street where Steve Jobs works, as seen through an iPhone sitting 2,944 miles away:

One caveat: The iPhone lacks an internal compass, so it still can’t deliver Google’s vaunted Compass Mode, where the view changes as you swing your smartphone left and right (see here).

For more on what the update offers, see here. To download it, plug your iPhone into your computer and click on Check for Update. iPhone 2.2 weighs in at 246 MB and installs in less than 10 minutes.

Smartphones — and in particular Apple’s iPhone — were the only bright spot in ChangeWave’s November survey of corporate IT spending for the next 90 days, an otherwise dismal forecast that research director Paul Carton described in terms ranging from “huge nose dive” to “historic collapse.”

Asked whether they planned to spend more, the same, or less on information technology in the next quarter, the 1,926 respondents came back with answers that were almost universally pessimistic. Only one in 10 said he or she planned to spend more, while 45% said they expected to spend less — this at the time of the year when planned outlays for IT usually take an uptick.

“We keep looking for a break in the gloom,” Carton told reporters in a conference call Thursday. “We’re just not getting it yet.”

The only positive sign Carton could find was continued growth — albeit modest — in plans for smartphone spending, with 35% of respondents reporting their company plans to buy smartphones next quarter, up 1 point from August.

As shown in the chart below, Research in Motion (RIMM) is still clinging to its nearly 80% share of planned smartphone purchases. But Apple’s (AAPL) slice of that market continues to grow, especially among small-to-medium sized firms, with 22% of companies planning to buy iPhones in the next quarter, up from 17%  three months ago.

According to ChangeWave, the iPhone is now the No. 2 smartphone in the workplace, with a 14% share, as Palm’s (PALM) share continues its downward spiral, falling from 15% of corporate smartphones in August to 11% in November. (See here.)

The iPhone scores even higher in ChangeWave’s surveys of consumers. See for example the July report, in which 56% of consumers surveyed said they wanted an iPhone, compared with 23% who were holding out for a BlackBerry.

ChangeWave’s latest corporate survey was conducted from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12 among ChangeWave Alliance members involved with IT spending in their organization.

From the Changewave Alliance Web site:

ChangeWave runs a proprietary network of 15,000 highly qualified business, technology, and medical professionals referred to as the ChangeWave Alliance. Alliance members are credentialed experts in leading companies of select industries who spend their everyday lives working on the frontline of technological change. (link)

The BlackBerry Storm, Verizon (VZ) and RIM’s (RIMM) answer to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, opens like a Broadway show on Friday. So naturally, Thursday’s papers and blogs are full of reviews. A sampling of the big ones:

• Walt Mossberg. The Wall Street Journal. BlackBerry’s Storm Presses Into the Touch-Phone Fray: Mixed positive. He likes the high-res camera (which does video), the replaceable battery, the push e-mail, the ability to cut-and-paste, the corporate security features and Verizon’s 3G network — an improvement over AT&T’s (T). He misses Wi-Fi, however, and he’s not particularly fond of the so-called SurePress touchscreen. “The feature does provide a more reassuring confirmation that a key has been struck or an icon has been clicked than the mere visual feedback one receives from the iPhone. But neither I, nor any of the several BlackBerry addicts I asked to try it out, considered typing on the Storm’s keyboard to be very similar to using the keyboard of a traditional full-sized BlackBerry.” (link)

• Joshua Topolsky. Engadget. BlackBerry Storm review: “The selling points are easy: the phone is gorgeous to look at and hold, it’s designed and backed by RIM (now almost a household name thanks to their prevalence in the business and entertainment markets), and it’s packed with features that, at first glance, make it seem not only as good as the iPhone, but better. The only hitch in this plan is a major one: it’s not as easy, enjoyable, or consistent to use as the iPhone, and the one place where everyone is sure they have an upper hand — that wow-inducing clickable screen — just isn’t all that great.” (link)

• Daniel Dumas. Wired.com. RIM’s First Touchscreen Device Almost Eclipses the iPhone: “WIRED Click screen is a revelation for touch compatible devices. Converts iTunes to BlackBerry media without breaking a sweat. Included GSM card means the Storm is a true globetrotter - it can work in virtually any foreign port. Photos, video, and text pop like Ice Cube’s AK (on a bad day). Posh fit and finish look rich enough to buy YOU dinner. — TIRED OS lag on a piece of hardware this gorgeous is unacceptable. Scrolling through menus is jagged, slow, and pokey. Accelerometer sometimes takes a good 5-10 seconds to orient itself. Lack of Wi-Fi is lame. Verizon’s totalitarian control over the Storm’s OS is even lamer.” (link)

• Yardena Arar. PC World. BlackBerry’s Storm: Awkward and Disappointing: “The decision by Research in Motion to differentiate the Storm by giving its capacitive touch screen a mechanical component (the entire screen functions as a button for confirming selections or initiating actions) turns out to be more confusing than helpful. Ultimately, the Storm’s touch interface feels like a failed experiment. — It’s too bad, because the Storm has some nice features and makes a great first impression.” (link)

• The Boy Genius. The Boy Genius Report. Verizon BlackBerry Storm review: “The good thing is that this is, afterall, a BlackBerry, and once you get past accepting that there will be some hiccups, it’s really not all that bad. It’s a great phone, a very good device for email, a really good media player, and a decent web browsing machine. You’ll just have to decide what your priorities are in a mobile device and see if the Storms meets that.” (link)

Have you weathered the Storm? Tell us what you liked — or didn’t like — in the comments below.