The floundering economy hasn’t kept consumers from spending on mobile data, according to the latest quarterly report on the wireless industry from Chetan Sharma, one of our GigaOM Pro analysts. U.S. data service revenues grew 27 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, Sharma reported, with Verizon Wireless and AT&T accounting for 80 percent of the rise, underscoring what I wrote last week about how the rich carriers are getting richer. Given the investment needed to build out new networks, and the incredible growth in data, both the smaller carriers and U.S. regulators should mind the growing gap between those that are raking in the wireless data dough and those that are not.

Verizon’s data revenue exceeded $4 billion during the quarter, and is now approaching longtime global leader NTT DoCoMo.  Overall, the top four U.S. carriers “are now a permanent fixture” among the top 10 worldwide carriers in terms of mobile service revenues. Other nuggets from Sharma’s report include:

• 3G penetration in the U.S. stayed at “a healthy” 43 percent in the third quarter of 2009, with Verizon outpacing its competitors and T-Mobile slowly expanding its 3G coverage. The growth in 3G and smartphones helped offset some of the downward pressure on the data revenues and overall ARPU.

• Flat-rate pricing continued to gain steam in the U.S. market with industry-wide flat-rate pricing plans that included data. Almost all of the major carriers are offering flat-fee access plans for most of the new smartphones being introduced in the market, and roughly 20 percent of the consumers have flat-rate data plans.

• The subscriber gap between the two largest carriers (AT&T and Verizon) and the next-largest two (Sprint and T-Mobile) will continue to increase, Sharma predicts, rising from 28 percent.

U.S. mobile data traffic is likely to exceed 400 petabytes by the end of 2009, according to Sharma, up 193 percent from 2008. And that increased usage is forcing carriers to accelerate their 4G strategies and adopt a multipronged model to manage traffic more effectively. With the larger carriers seeing the greatest revenue gains from data, it stands to reason that as more investment is needed to “keep up with the Verizons” both AT&T and Verizon will continue their data lead. That’s bad news for T-Mobile and Sprint. Sprint’s investment in WiMAX was its attempt to get out in front of this demand for data, but so far it looks like its timing may have been off.

Gizmo5 founder Michael Robertson

Given that most of Google’s customers are also likely Skype users (aka web workers), it makes perfect sense for it to buy Gizmo5. The San Diego-based company recently developed OpenSky, a gateway that allows you to call Skype from any VoIP-based phone/application. As founder Michael Robertson told us at the time:

What we’ve done is create a SIP alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call a Skype user named echo123 you simply dial echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com from any SIP-aware device (which is just about every piece of VOIP equipment). Users can even have any SIP call forwarded to their Skype address using my.gizmo5.com.

This application could come in handy for Google to capture some of the Skype magic as it tries to expand into the enterprise and increase its collaboration offerings. Gizmo5 could also help Google extend its reach on mobiles and bring much-needed expertise for soft clients for voice calls.

Gizmo5 says it has 6 million users; that number is unverified. If the deal is indeed true, Robertson, who been desperately looking for an encore since his first company, MP3.com, must be thrilled. Gizmo5 has raised closed to $20 million, a majority of it coming from Robertson.

P.S.: I want to apologize to readers for writing the original post outlining that Skype had bought Gizmo5. I guess the rumors of Skype buying Gizmo5 were still swirling in my head.

Yesterday I called my dad on my cell phone (neither of us have landlines) to tell him about something his granddaughter did, and a few minutes into the conversation he asked if I were near my computer. If I was, couldn’t we Skype instead? In my home Skype is both the P2P telephony program and a verb for video chat. My dad now prefers to Skype with me rather than talk on the phone, a tipping point of sorts in the way we communicate. He said he grew up watching cartoons where folks like the Jetsons talked via videophone, and since the possibility is here today he wants to use it.

In this multimodal communications world, the phone companies, which still rely on voice for both wired and about a quarter of their wireless revenue, should be worried. Voice revenue isn’t growing in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t if carriers got a bit more creative. So far, data is helping phone companies that have wireless networks as well as those that are providing Ethernet backhaul for anticipated growth in data.

However, the real focus at carriers should be about getting beyond merely providing the pipe in this multimodal world. Check out what BT is doing with its Ribbit acquisition, as an example.

Skype CEO Josh Silverman would certainly be thrilled to hear about my dad’s preferred form of communication, as would the Telepresence folks at Cisco hoping to get the same thing happening in the business world. Silverman told Om in September:

“We are pretty big on video calling,” Silverman told me. The company is putting a lot of resources into building a better video conferencing experience, he said, because he believes that person-to-person video calling is going to be as big as video. That absolutely makes sense because today the definition of communication is constantly changing. In the past, the world was all about voice, then instant messages and now video calling. People are sending messages and status updates via Twitter and Facebook. The communications are now multimodal.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future my phone calls with be less about voice and more about video, voice, link sharing, and even media sharing all within the context of a television or PC screen. I can turn parts of it on or off as needed. It’s like the vision for social TV that Liz outlined back on March (subscription required) rather than the Jetsons-style videophone that my dad is so excited about right now. The carriers are implementing on this social vision for television, but they should be thinking about adding this to voice as well.

Autodesk to give away free carbon management tool (Earth2Tech)
SCALE 8X announces call for papers (OStatic)
Will the cloud lead me away from the Mac? (TheAppleBlog)
Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox! (WebWorkerDaily)
I’m putting my Palm Pre on notice (jkOnTheRun)
Evolving online strategy: MTV vs. Fox News (NewTeeVee)

Microsoft unveiled Exchange Server 2010, which has been in beta testing since April, at its TechEd conference in Berlin today, and showed it working with Outlook 2010.  Exchange 2010 is the company’s latest server technology for on-premise software deployments, but it also incorporates many features aimed at web and online services. It has a new, integrated email archive designed to help companies increase compliance and respond quickly to legal and e-discovery concerns, and there are now previews of voice mails in Microsoft Outlook. It’s also very apparent that Microsoft officials are aware of the new kinds of competition that Exchange is facing.

It was clear from the product positioning that Microsoft is feeling the heat (GigaOm Pro, sub. req’d) from enterprise adoption of tools from Google, such as Gmail, many of which are free or available in low-cost versions for business use. Cisco — a long-time Microsoft partner — is also taking aim at Microsoft Exchange with a new enterprise email service, WebEx Email. Steve Elop, president of Microsoft’s business solutions division, made numerous mentions of cost savings that enterprises can purportedly reap with Exchange 2010, and there was much focus on the email archiving and legal compliance features to be found in both it and Outlook 2010. Among cost-saving citations, Elop noted that companies can now run Exchange Server on lower-cost storage platforms than SANs.

Indeed, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been very vocal recently about that company’s “next billion-dollar opportunities” when it comes to delivering web-hosted applications and other tools that can serve as alternatives to Microsoft’s solutions — and its licensing fees. In fact, many of Schmidt’s recent comments are decidedly anti-Microsoft.

No doubt with Google’s focus on online-hosted applications in mind, many new features in Exchange and Outlook are designed to allow email inboxes and archives to migrate easily between on-premise deployments and online-hosted ones. For example, a demonstration at the Berlin event included taking an existing on-premise email inbox and transferring it to a web-hosted implementation. Exchange Server is available now for trial use, here (Microsoft Silverlight req’d.).

Microsoft officials also announced that the company is acquiring SourceGear’s Teamprise technology. Teamprise allows Java and Eclipse developers to create applications with Microsoft’s Visual Studio. We’ll be on the lookout for more announcements slated to arrive at TechEd this week and will update you as they come in. Stay tuned.

In a clear sign that mobile advertising has arrived and become a major revenue opportunity, Google today announced that it is buying AdMob, the upstart mobile advertising company based in Mountain View, Calif., for $750 million in stock. On AdMob’s blog, Google’s Susan Wojcicki, VP of product management, and Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering, write:

For publishers of mobile websites and applications, this deal will mean better products and tools and more effective monetization of their content — allowing them to focus more on their users and less on how to generate revenue.

For advertisers who want to reach users when they are engaged with mobile content, this deal will bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. It will also mean more interesting, engaging ad formats.

AdMob has long been the dominant pure-play ad company in mobile, gaining traction as a kind of automated ad clearinghouse for inventory on the mobile web. The company has also expanded into mobile app advertising, which has exploded thanks to uptake of superphones such as the iPhone and Android handsets. Google, meanwhile, has primarily focused its mobile ad business on search.

As Google pointed out, the deal follows a handful of similar acquisitions by traditional online companies looking to move into mobile: AOL bought Third Screen Media more than two years ago, Yahoo picked up Actionality several months later and Microsoft bought its way onto the field with the pickup of ScreenTonic. But Google’s move raises the stakes for all the players in the game, and fires a warning shot across the bow of smaller mobile startups. Expect Google to move quickly to integrate AdMob’s business with its own mobile ad division as the company’s Android platform picks up steam.

Rupert Murdoch, founder and head honcho of News Corp., the largest media company in the world, wants to block access to his content and set up pay walls around it. News Corp. already does it at The Wall Street Journal.

“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it — steal our stories, we say they steal our stories — they just take them,” Murdoch says in an interview with David Speers of Sky News Australia, which is one-third owned by News Corp. “That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people…They shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

The move is aimed at Google, as outlined in this conversation:

Skype has hired well-known VoIP expert Jonathan Rosenberg as its chief technology strategist, the company announced today. Rosenberg was highlighted as one of the Cisco executives Index Ventures’ Michael Volpi would bring over to Skype in order to help the company figure out a way around the JoltId stranglehold. As you might know, Skype and Joltid, the company that owns the technology used by Skype (and controlled by founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis), settled with the company last week.

Rosenberg is well-regarded in SIP circles and his hiring means that Skype is making a stronger push into the enterprise. Rosenberg was a Cisco Fellow at Cisco Systems, where he directed technology strategy for its enterprise voice product portfolio. When I last spoke to Skype CEO Josh Silverman, he was pretty clear about his desire to turn Skype into a major enterprise voice and collaboration player. Rosenberg’s hiring is a smart step by Skype. (Related post: How Skype Plans to Dominate Business Telephony.)

Broadband growth in the U.S. has slowed considerably in the last two years and future growth for online access technologies will come less from people adopting broadband for the first time and more from people upgrading from one technology to another, according to a report out today from Forrester. In addition to new technologies, Americans will also see speed boosts — even those on the slower service tiers — as providers attempt to offer more value on the low end rather than lower prices.

For many, the elimination of the 768 kbps or 1.5 Mbps connection options will go unnoticed, but for those that really only use email, a price decrease for barely broadband speeds will be welcome indeed — it could even spur a few laggards holding out on broadband because of pricing to step up. However, the big takeaway of the report is that most of the U.S. — at 80.9 million homes — has some access to broadband, and that such access will continue to improve.

When it comes to ISPs, subscriber growth will only help drive sales through the next two years; after that, revenue growth will have to come from new technologies, services and pricing schemes. Cable companies so far are winning, with 45 percent of homes expected to be subscribing to cable broadband by the end of 2009, but fiber to the home will make the most gains over the next five years, by which time it’s projected to grow to account for 10 percent of all access technologies from just 4 percent. And during that time, alternative wireless technologies aren’t forecast to be competitive to cable, fiber or even DSL.

While the speed boosts are welcome, I think the report needs to spend more time discussing how to make broadband access a differentiated service, beyond price and bundles. It recommends that providers focus their competitive strategies less on a bundle and more on  access to online storage, TV Everywhere and in-home entertainment that require higher speeds, and help keep subscribers from switching. The irony, of course, is that such high-bandwidth applications are apparently the same ones leading providers to cry uncle under an onslaught of heavy usage.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise: Clearwire, the WiMAX-based wireless network operator, is looking for a $1.5 billion infusion from Sprint and other backers including cable giant Comcast. Clearwire executives, including CEO William Morrow, have been publicly talking about a need for new capital. The announcement is likely to be made later this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. The investment once again shows that networks cost a lot of money, especially ones that are based on new technologies.

It also shows that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse doesn’t have any choice but to go all in. He was the man who made the decision to merge Sprint’s Xohm business (and spectrum) with Clearwire to form a new company. As a result, Sprint is the largest shareholder of the WiMAX network operator, and “Sprint will use money from its own cash pile or raise new debt for the $1 billion investment,” the Journal reports. About a year-and-a-half ago, Sprint, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse put a total of $3.2 billion in Clearwire.

Intel is the company’s biggest investor, even though Sprint is the largest shareholder because of its spectrum and other contributions to company. In August, Stacey pointed out that the money Clearwire had was enough to offer service to about 75 million possible subscribers, not enough in its battle against large phone companies.

Interestingly, Google is not likely to participate in this next round of funding. I wonder if that has something to do with Google’s new, cozy relationship with Verizon. With over half a million subscribers, Clearwire hasn’t been a raging success. Its service is available in Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Texas, parts of North Carolina, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore. (Related: “When and Where to Find 4G in Q4″)

Both Clearwire and Sprint are in a race against time: They need the new networks rolled out before Verizon and AT&T launch their next-generation high-speed wireless networks based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. Sprint has been bleeding customers at an alarming rate and soon might find itself at a point of no return. Let’s hope for Hesse’s sake, the Clearwire bet pays off! (Related post: “WiMAX’s Future Is in Emerging Markets”)

Cisco Systems, the Wall Street darling, might soon find itself in a street brawl with not only former enemies but also allies who are turning on it. The company, which once made its living selling core infrastructure products such as routers and switches, has more recently been chasing new markets such as video conferencing and data center-focused technologies including servers. Sure, over the long term, the upside of these markets is huge, but in the near term these moves could prove to be painful. Why? Because these moves into new markets are pitting the company against one-time supporters.

It has already been skirmishing with Microsoft (in collaboration and unified communications) and Google, and soon it’s going to find itself locked in mortal combat with behemoths that are going to be merciless in protecting their turf. On GigaOM Pro (subscription required), Derrick Harris points out that almost everyone has a vested interest in keeping Cisco down.

This includes Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Last week, Cisco announced a partnership with storage giant EMC and virtualization leader VMware to set up a joint venture called Acadia based on the concept that the data center is the computer. I wonder how service providers feel about using Cisco’s unified computing products now that it has made known its intentions to compete with them. (Related post: “What the Cisco/EMC/VMWare Trinity Means for Cloud Computing“)

More importantly, because these new efforts cut into the storage sales of HP, Dell and IBM, it is more than likely they are going to respond aggressively with scorched-earth strategies. Cisco’s opponents are already aligning with each other, trying to figure out ways to pulverize the company and its partners.

What do you guys think? Do you agree that Cisco is in for a rough ride? Or do you think the company’s rivals should be quaking in their boots?

Earlier today in response to my post about Nimbuzz, a good pal emailed to find out why the service didn’t work over the iPhone’s 3G connection. After all, a few weeks ago AT&T announced support for VoIP over 3G with much fanfare, a move that was widely applauded, including kudos from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

A month has passed since the decision was announced, and there is still no support for VoIP over 3G. “Apple actually did not approve the 3G calling — so they completely broke their promise of allowing VoIP calls on 3G,” a Nimbuzz spokesperson said.

Even Skype doesn’t work over 3G (see attached screenshot). Truphone is not working either, much like Fring. I am not sure if these services work over 3G data connections in Europe and other parts of the world, but it looks like Apple is the one putting in the roadblock here.

Location is a core element in mobile applications and smartphones. We take our mobile devices with us everywhere we go. Their location, and the context in which we use them, changes constantly. In the next two years, location will become central to user experience and performance on hundreds of millions of handsets and applications.

We most commonly think of location within traditional mobile applications. Navigation apps were the first to use it. Local search results and social-networking apps are more relevant when mapped to a person’s current location. But location can do more than simply drive people to places where they can shop, eat or meet friends. Soon, all mobile applications will need to be tied to location if they want to stay relevant.

Applications that we currently do not think of as location-relevant, such as books, sports, reference, music and cooking all become more interesting when a user’s location is taken into account. Home cooks will be able to check out the most popular recipes in their neighborhoods. Music lovers will see where others are listening to their favorite artists around the country. Sports fans will be able to interact with other spectators in the same stadium, and book enthusiasts will be able to search for books written about their neighborhood, or find nearby book clubs to join.

Some apps are already beginning to experiment with location in unusual ways. Sportacular, a top iPhone sports app, allows users to vote for which team they predict will win an upcoming game. The votes are tallied and categorized by region and state. Three days before a recent Red Sox v. Angels baseball game, we saw that every state in the country thought the Red Sox would win except for the Angels’ home state of California. In the end, the Angels dominated, but the voting process encouraged debate and banter among users, fostering a deeper sense of community.

TuneWiki takes over a mobile device’s music player and offers a more compelling user experience by displaying song lyrics and adding community features. The app also ties in location with TuneWiki music maps, which displays the songs that are currently playing around a user’s current location. The community feature lets people see what songs are popular in their area for the current hour, day, week, month or year.

Over 3 billion mobile applications like Sportacular and TuneWiki will be downloaded in 2009. This market will explode to 7 billion applications in 2013 alone, The Yankee Group projects. These apps will make already-powerful mobile devices more functional, social and customizable to a person’s interests and style. Neither Sportacular nor TuneWiki need location. But serving up music and sports content within the context of location makes the information more relevant, engaging, and socially connected.

Data represents location apps from the iPhone App Store, Android Market, Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog, and BlackBerry App World.

The developers of these applications are driving the mobile marketplace. Some are generating millions of dollars in revenue, and are becoming hot acquisition targets. Amazon acquired Lexcycle’s Stanza, an iPhone eBook reader, in April 2009, and SnapTell, a location-based image recognition and shopping application in June. Also in April, IAC purchased Urbanspoon, a location-based restaurant search app. In July, Blackboard, an educational software provider, purchased TerriblyClever, developers of the location-based MobileEdu applications for college campuses, for $4 million. The location-based TomTom iPhone navigation app generated $4.8 million in the third quarter, Distmo estimates, while the location-aware I Am T Pain app from Smule is projected to generate $3 million alone in 2009.

The applications generating real revenue and that have been targeted for acquisition are not simple, gimmicky apps. They are highly functional and take full advantage of device capability, like location, accelerometers and graphics. Millions of dollars in revenue and high-profile acquisitions are classic early signs of a lucrative tech investment sector. As these trends continue, the size of the mobile application market will continue to accelerate.

Massive growth in these types of rich and context-relevant mobile applications will change the way consumers purchase and interact with mobile devices. Ultimately, the growth of mobile apps will help drive the device market. And while apps get even cooler over the next five years, mobile devices and data will get more accessible. Handset prices will fall, and hot devices like the iPhone, Palm Pre and netbooks will capture even more consumer attention. 3G networks will get more powerful; the demand for mobile data and connectivity will increase; and operator subscription fees will get more affordable worldwide.

We’re seeing a shift in the market away from feature phones (voice and SMS-only) to smartphones. An estimated 63 million mobile phone users upgraded to smartphones from feature phones in 2008, from approximately 15 million upgrades in 2005. We will see massive growth of the market over the next four years with 503 million smartphones projected to ship in 2013, RBC Capital Markets projects. The netbook market will also expand — 50 million netbooks will ship in 2012 alone, Gartner projects. Consumer demand for location-aware applications will help drive the distribution boom of these devices.

Developers of today’s most lucrative applications are applying location to their apps in compelling, new ways, and there’s every reason to expect this trend to continue — and to open up new revenue models in the future.

Kate Imbach is the head of marketing at Skyhook Wireless and co-founder and organizer at Mobile Monday Americas. You can follow her on Twitter @Kate8.

Nimbuzz, a Netherlands-based VoIP and messaging startup, is introducing a premium calling service called NimbuzzOut. This service is available via an upgrade of its mobile client, which is currently available from the iPhone’s iTunes Apps Store, the Ovi Store and GetJar. So far, Nimbuzz has offered a meta-client that works on PCs, Macs, Symbian, Android and the iPhone and allows you to sign into any IM service including Skype. NimbuzzOut is the first step toward revenue for the company, which has pulled in an undisclosed amount of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, original backers of Skype. In addition to Skype, Truphone and Fring are two other competitors for this fast-growing service. Nimbuzz has been adding about 40,000 users a day, or about a million new registrations every month, and now has a total of over 10 million registered consumers. The company says nearly 30 percent of those registered are regular users.

Nimbuzz has certainly come a long way. At the time of its launch, almost three years ago, we were pretty critical of the VoIP-on-mobile service because it was a me-too offering that was quite a pain to use. A year-and-a-half later, Nimbuzz introduced a new meta client for the Symbian phones. It allowed you to sign into various IM clients. In addition, it allowed some basic VoIP calling, but it wasn’t really until they introduced the new iPhone client that Nimbuzz started to see some serious traction. My previous post gives a good overview of the Nimbuzz feature set.

The company just announced a super communication client for the iPhone that allows you to communicate in many different ways. For instance, you can make free calls over Wi-Fi to your IM buddies. You can also call folks on their landlines and mobile phones with SkypeOut using any one of Nimbuzz’s 10 VoIP partners including Gizmo5, Vyke, sipgate and A1 and, of course, Skype. This is a new feature in the service, and makes Skype In/Out Services more valuable.

These services also work over 3G and are described as “Nimbuzz Dial-Up VoIP” which essentially makes it possible to call others by dialing a local access number which then connects to anywhere in the world via Nimbuzz VoIP servers.

For the past month, I have been using the pre-release of NimbuzzOut on the iPhone to place calls to my far-flung group of friends and family. The calling prices are pretty good– about 8 cents a minute to India, 2 cents to the U.S., and 3 cents to the UK. If you look around, that is pretty much what you pay with most services — Skype is a bit more expensive.

The voice call quality is on par with Skype, which is still my communication method of choice for work-related calls. NimbuzzOut is dead simple to place calls: Just hit the call button, and you are good to go. You can, of course, use other calling services, but I don’t see any reason why considering Nimbuzz is offering good rates.

NimbuzzOut has a few features I personally like — you can natively use the phone client to buy additional minutes. I also like the fact that the client uses the native address book and doesn’t create a duplicate contact list. The Symbian client actually lets you edit, add and delete contacts from your address book.

There are a few things I don’t like: If you leave the notifications on, the client will run down your battery and leave the phone pretty useless. If you are using it on an iPhone, then you have to use the Wi-Fi connection, which makes me a tad upset because you can make Skype calls over 3G. You can make NimbuzzOut calls via 3G on Symbian phones, however.

Bottom line: If you are looking for a well-designed, easy-to-use, all-in-one messaging client that also makes cheap long-distance calls, then you don’t need to look any further than Nimbuzz. I have no qualms in recommending NimbuzzOut.

P.S. There is a reward for those who read the complete post. If you are among the first 50 people who send their name and Nimbuzz username to gigaom@nimbuzz.com, the company will give you a $25 NimbuzzOut credit.

Update: This offer is now closed. Thanks for participating.

Of all the dot-com superstars that appeared in the ’90s, shone brightly and then disappeared from sight, few have been granted a second act. One exception is Priceline, which 11 years after it was founded — and 10 years after its stock price collapsed — is quietly thriving. It’s no superstar now, but it’s an interesting case study of how an online company once written off for dead can in fact age gracefully.

At its peak, Priceline’s “name-your-own-price” business model created a stir. Its founder, Jay Walker, trumpeted the idea as a revolution that would upend the travel industry, and a lot of smart people bought it. George Soros and Paul Allen invested their money, and the stock surged to a $15.7 billion market cap, larger than most airlines. Forbes called Walker a “modern-day Edison,” and Priceline expanded into new markets like gasoline and groceries.

The revolution was over before it began. Priceline’s stock peaked nearly a year before the Nasdaq did, and it just kept falling: By the end of 2000, its market cap had shrunk by 99 percent to $220 million. Forbes regretted its praise for Walker, admitting he “hasn’t lived up to our label,” and Walker left the company soon after. Priceline backed out of the gasoline and grocery businesses, retreating to online travel, where it faced increasing competition from Expedia, Orbitz and others.

But writing off Priceline as another failed dot-com also proved premature. Its approach wasn’t revolutionary after all, but neither was it a bad idea. Somewhat ironically, it took another market crash for Priceline to begin to deliver on its promise. Its stock, which has risen 265 percent in the past year, has joined the S&P 500 — the market’s way of saying you’ve finally arrived. Its capitalization is back above $7 billion, making it larger than Expedia.

In the first six months of 2009, Priceline booked $4.3 billion in travel services, an increase of 12 percent during a period when overall bookings declined by 8 percent. The company will update those numbers for the third quarter next week, and analysts are expecting bookings to grow by more than 25 percent, faster than many of Priceline’s online rivals.

What changed for Priceline? Its management avoided the hype about the revolutionary potential of naming your own price. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy did refer to it in commercials, but Priceline waited patiently for the concept to take root — the way Amazon has been patient about free shipping, or Netflix has been about streaming movies online with no extra fee. The company has also expanded piecemeal, buying up smaller companies like Bookings.com when it could, and expanding abroad. It now offers travel in 78 countries.

There’s a lesson in Priceline’s riches-to-rags-to-riches story for other Web companies. A lot of people watching tech companies — especially ones like me who write about them — get all antsy about their ability to deliver on their promise. This comes up when we talk about companies like Facebook not being public yet, or Twitter looking for revenue.

But often, consumers move at a much slower rate. It can take years to grow comfortable with a new business model. There is a lot to be said about moving quickly in a fast-evolving industry. But there’s just as much to be said about being patient with the people who are going to make you money.

Verizon has been all over the Android news this week, with two of the hottest phones finally arriving on the scene. The Motorola Droid, a stylish phone almost as thin as the iPhone but with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, debuted Friday. Early reviews are not finding the keyboard to be much of a bonus, but it’s amazing to find one at all in a thin handset. Verizon is also offering the HTC Droid Eris for just $99 with a contract. It’s shipping with the HTC Sense interface on top of the stock Android UI, making it the cheapest phone thus equipped.

Some Droid phone reviewers have taken note of the Verizon Channel in the Android Market. This channel offers apps that have met Verizon’s approval before offering them to customers. T-Mobile announced its own channel for the Android Market this week. Both channels allow customers to buy apps and have them charged to the phone bill, eliminating the need for a credit card transaction.

Meanwhile, two recently announced e-book readers could have more than the Android OS in common. Spring Design this week sued Barnes & Noble over the Nook reader, claiming it has features the bookseller gleaned from information Spring Design shared with B&N under NDA. It has requested an injunction to prevent the Nook from being sold.