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The BlackBerry Storm may not sell for more than an Apple iPhone, but it costs more to manufacture, according to market research firm iSuppli.

The BlackBerry Storm 9530 carries a combined materials and manufacturing cost of $202.89, according to iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Service. The cost to built an 8GB iPhone 3G is $174.

Verizon, the exclusive carrier for the BlackBerry Storm, sells the smartphone for $249.99 before a $50 rebate. AT&T sells Apple’s iPhone 3G for $199, and both carriers require a two-year contract.

So is BlackBerry maker Research in Motion taking a bath on the device? Maybe not.

“The amount of money that it costs to build a phone has nothing to do with the amount of money the handset vendor makes because there are subsidies involved,” said Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. “So it is possible that there are heavier-than-usual subsidies being applied to this phone. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me.”

RIM’s Clickable Screen

iSuppli said the Storm matches up with the iPhone 3G in attributes and functionality. Both phones combine wireless voice communications with other features, including Internet access, e-mail, built-in GPS, messaging and an integrated camera. Both phones offer a touchscreen.

“The touchscreen and the resulting user interface represent the focal point of the Storm’s design from the user’s point of view, as it is with the iPhone,” said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager for iSuppli. “However, RIM has added a special differentiating feature from the iPhone: The ‘clickable’ screen.”

According to Rassweiler, the one thing that most touchscreens lack is the feedback mechanism users get from a conventional keyboard that clicks when a key is depressed, letting you know your choice has been registered.

“Clearly,” he said, “RIM felt this was lacking and added an actual physical button that allows users to feel and hear a click when they make a selection on the display.”

RIM Roams Farther

How does the Storm’s clickable screen compare with that of the iPhone? While the Storm is very competitive with the iPhone in terms of features and hardware, Tina Teng, senior wireless analyst for iSuppli, said it doesn’t have the iPhone’s multi-touch technology.

“The Storm uses a simple physical button under the primary touchscreen to provide haptic feedback. This allows one physical key press at a time, meaning there is no double-tapping capability with the Storm.”

On the other hand, the Storm is capable of roaming farther globally than the iPhone due to its support for the EVDO air standard, along with CDMA 2000, GSM, WCDMA and HSDPA. This allows Verizon’s Storm users to roam around the world without having to rent a separate device, depending on carrier restrictions.

Greengart said the iPhone offers that same capability, except in South Korea. But the iPhone also offers much more value, he said, with regard to add-ons.

Apple’s App Store, for example, is growing significantly. RIM can also claim a large number of applications, but Greengart said they are difficult to find and in some cases difficult to download. RIM’s forthcoming store could remedy that problem, but Apple still has one thing its competitors don’t: iTunes.

“The integration with iTunes is an enormous competitive advantage for the iPhone,” Greengart said. “But the BlackBerry e-mail system, particularly for those concerned about security, is an advantage for the Storm. And the BlackBerry brand is on the ascent. Someone who just moved into a white house with an oval office is getting a lot of press for the BlackBerry.”

Dell Inc is plotting a foray into the cell phone arena as early as next month, making and selling smartphones to revitalize a business walloped by crumbling PC sales and pitting the firm against Apple, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The world’s No. 2 maker of PCs, which has been designing prototypes for over a year, is focusing on smartphones — the class of high-end devices that encompasses Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry, the newspaper cited people familiar with the matter as saying.

If launched, the phones will be based on Google’s Android operating system and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software, it said. One model will even feature a touchscreen, not unlike the iPhone’s, the Journal reported.

However, Dell has not finalized its plans and may still abandon them, the Journal added without elaborating.

Shares in Dell climbed 1.4 percent in after-hours trade, barely denting an 8.6 percent dive during the regular session to $9.95. Microsoft stock was up 1.3 percent, and Google shares were holding steady.

Representatives for Dell and Microsoft declined to comment, and Google representatives were not available for comment.

Smartphones — high end mobile devices that can assume many of the functions found traditionally on PCs, such as playing videos and music — are the fastest growing segment of the cell phone industry.

IT consultancy IDC expects smartphone shipments to climb 8.9 percent globally in 2009, far outstripping a decline in the overall worldwide cell phone market.

U.S. PC giant Dell, which lost its mantle of world’s largest PC maker to Hewlett-Packard about two years ago, has toyed with the idea of selling cell phones since early 2007, the Journal said.

Chief Executive Michael Dell, who returned in 2007 to the firm he founded, has explored new markets, but earlier attempts to diversify into new areas, including a plan to sell digital music players, were dropped.

Dell hired Ron Garriques, Motorola’s former cell phone chief, to re-energize its consumer products division. But, under a non-compete agreement, Garriques was barred from working on mobile phones until February 2009.

An amateur alternative to Central China Television’s annual Lunar New Year’s Eve gala failed to reach its audience, as the online program proved inaccessible to most would-be viewers.

The ‘Shanzhai’ show, billed as a grassroots alternative to the glitzy and propaganda-heavy extravaganza by state-owned CCTV, was supposed to air online Sunday night on China Countryside TV and through Macao Asia satellite TV.

Would-be viewers posed a series of complaints that the download was too slow, kept cutting off or was ‘blanking out’ on the website (www.ccstv.net).

China’s internet police routinely block or inhibit access to websites deemed politically inconvenient or sensitive, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether Shanzhai was blocked or suffered a technical glitch.

The show’s creator, Lao Meng, told state news agency Xinhua

he did not know the reason for the outage.

“Maybe too many people were logging on the website,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Those who managed to see the pre-recorded show had mixed reviews.

“It looked like a piece of community theater,” said an article on portal xinming.net which panned the show.

“I saw a bit of it, it wasn’t bad. Anyway, I didn’t go look at CCTV,” said an anonymous poster who responded to the article.

Other posters also praised the show’s effort to give an alternative to CCTV, which garners almost 400 million viewers even though it is generally derided by younger Chinese as hokey and stodgy.

One Beijinger said he hadn’t tried to see the show.

“My parents still want to watch the normal boring one.”

All throughout 2008, as the economy went from bad to worse, video games continued to sell at record levels, boosted by the popularity of the Nintendo Wii and blockbuster games like “Grand Theft Auto IV.”

Still, there are some signs that the recession is nipping at the heels of video games. The priciest console, Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, continues to lag behind its less expensive rivals, the Wii and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360.

According to data from market researcher NPD Group, Americans bought $21.33 billion worth of video game systems, software and accessories last year. This is a big jump from the previous year’s roughly $18 billion, but slightly below the $22 billion that NPD had estimated as late as November.

“While industry growth has not continued at the blistering pace we saw during the second and third quarters, December’s 9 percent increase over last December brings the year in 19 percent ahead of last year, and sets a new record for total industry sales,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in an e-mail statement.

December marked the first time that the gaming industry’s revenue topped $5 billion in a single month, she noted. In comparison, it took all of 1997 to hit industry sales of $5.1 billion.

While the Wii, with its easy-to-use motion controller and playful titles, has been basking in the spotlight since its 2006 launch, Nintendo’s portable DS was the best-selling gaming system in December, topping 3 million units. The Wii, meanwhile, sold about 2.2 million units, up roughly 5 percent from November’s levels.

November and December are crucial months for video game companies, because they make the bulk of their money during the holidays.

Denise Kaigler, vice president of corporate affairs at Nintendo, called December “another strong month” for the Wii. The console has been plagued by supply shortages even though Nintendo has to boosted production several times. On Thursday, the console, along with the exercise game “Wii Fit,” was sold out on Best Buy’s Web site.

In July, Nintendo upped production of the Wii by 50 percent, and now churns out 2.4 million consoles each month worldwide. Kaigler said Nintendo is “constantly feeding” its retailers, and getting the consoles into everyone’s hands who wants one is a priority.

Total hardware sales climbed 2 percent in December, to $1.88 billion. In third behind the Wii and the DS was the Xbox 360, which sold 1.4 million units, up 14 percent from December 2007. Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said the Xbox business is meeting, and in some cases, such as its Live online service, exceeding expectations.

The PlayStation 3 sold 726,000 units, down 9 percent from December 2007. Its predecessor, the nearly 9-year-old PlayStation 2, sold 410,000. Peter Dille, a senior vice president at Sony, said in a statement the company remains “confident in our momentum into 2009.”

Software sales jumped 15 percent in December to $2.75 billion, led by “Wii Play,” a game launched in February 2007 that comes with an extra controller for the Wii at no extra cost.

Activision Blizzard Inc.’s “Call of Duty: World at War” was the month’s second-best selling game, followed by the “Wii Fit.”

For the year, software sales hit nearly $11 billion, a 26 percent increase from 2007. Hardware sales jumped 11 percent to $7.81 billion.