Good Morning Silicon Valley

Apple, already booked to dominate the buzz tomorrow with its “special event” (see “Almost semi-confirmed! Apple event will/won’t feature Beatles and/or new iPods!“), got a nice running start on the favorable coverage today with the latest report from iSuppli on the mobile phone market. According to the stats, the iPhone accounted for 1.8 percent of all U.S. handset sales in July, which may not sound like much, but was the equal of LG’s well-established and popular Chocolate. Even more impressive, the iPhone — despite not qualifying as a smartphone under iSuppli’s definition (it would need to accept third-party software to join the category) — outsold every smartphone on the market in July. The newcomer beat out every available model from BlackBerry, Palm, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung … every entrenched last one of them. Other fun factoids from the survey: 52 percent of iPhone buyers were male, and one-quarter of the purchasers switched over to AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive carrier, as part of the deal.

Meanwhile, the rumored contents of Apple’s event tomorrow has now grown to include almost everything except a Mideast peace plan, including some things equally likely (a surprise appearance by Paul McCartney singing “Hey Jude” to welcome the Beatles catalog into iTunes?). The talk of new iPods continues to seem the most substantial, with the latest speculation being that the new iPods will be able to receive digital radio and will include a “buy-now” function to allow the user to download and buy tracks as they are being played. As always, we’ll remain aquiver with anticipation awaiting the rapturous release that only a Steve Jobs presentation can bring. Festivities begin at 10 a.m. Pacific.