Dueling reports from Gartner and IDC show Apple (AAPL) grabbing a larger slice of domestic computer market in the third quarter of 2007, although the reports disagree about just how large that slice is.

Gartner has Apple’s market share climbing to 8.1%, up from 6.2% a year earlier.

IDC also shows strong growth for the company, but by its calculations, Apple now commands a 6.3% market share, up from 5.7% last summer.

Their findings are summarized in the charts below.

Four months after he tried to persuade Apple (AAPL) software developers to use Safari to write their iPhone applications, and after weeks of playing cat and mouse with programmers who risked bricking and wrote native apps anyway, Steve Jobs today changed his tune.

In a signed message posted on Apple.com’s start page, Jobs wrote:

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK [software developer’s kit] in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once–provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones–this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

Jobs’ reversal is a tacit admission on his part that Apple’s programmers can’t do it all. It could also a long way to repairing relations with the software developers the company alienated when its most recent software update wiped out the entire first generation of native iPhone 3rd-party apps.

For background, see Apple Set to Open iPhone (Within Limits) and Steve Jobs’ Keynote: Long on Flash, Short on News.

Two days after Apple (AAPL) began cutting the price of its DRM-free music for new customers, from $1.29 a song to 99¢, the company is still charging the higher price for existing customers.

The fact of the 30¢ price cut was confirmed yesterday by Steve Jobs, although the company denied that the move was in response to competition from Amazon (AMZN), which charges 89¢ to 99¢ per song, or Wal-Mart (WMT), which charges 94¢. “It’s been very popular with our customers, and we’re making it even more affordable,” both Jobs and spokesperson Natalie Kerris insisted.

But the price cut was not applied across the board. The discrepancy arises in the Upgrade My Library feature, which is still charging existing customers 30% extra for DRM-free songs.

For example:

A new customer who buys Norah Jones’ Feels Like Home on iTunes pays $12.99 for a 256 kbps, DRM-free version of album. That’s the same price existing customers paid for a 128 kbps, DRMed version when the album first came out. To get the higher-quality, iTunes Plus version through Upgrade My Library, those customers have to shell out an extra $3.86.

Of course, there is no competition for Apple’s Upgrade My Library feature. It’s the one thing you can’t do at Wal-Mart or Amazon.

However, Amazon sells a DRM-free, 256 kbps MP3 version of Feels Like Home for $8.99. They also sell the “Enhanced” CD for $12.97 new and $6.47 used.

Apple (AAPL) today confirmed what the analysts and rumor sites had already divined: OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the company’s flagship operating system, will go on sale Oct. 26. Apple’s retail stores will start selling it at 6 p.m., local time. Its online store is already accepting pre-orders at $129 apiece.

Much of what the new OS does is already known, thanks to the lengthy previews Steve Jobs has given over the past year and a half and to leaks from developers working with pre-release builds. (See, for example, Prince McLean’s Road to Leopard series at AppleInsider.) But the order in which the company’s press release ticks off the new features telegraphs which features it thinks will be Leopard’s key sellings points:

• Redesigned 3D Dock with Stacks, a new way to organize files with one-click access
• Updated Finder with CoverFlow, so you can flip through files as you do album covers in iTunes
• Spotlight search of content from any computer on a local network
• Back to My Mac, which lets you grab files from remote Macs over the Internet
• QuickLook, which displays the contents of files without having to open the app that created them
• Spaces, a new way to organize files by project and to flip from one project to another
• Time Machine, the much-touted back-up system*
• A new version of Mail wih 3-D stationary designs
• Notes and To Dos that can be synced across multiple Macs and stored in Smart Mailboxes
• Data detectors that recognize e-mail addresses and RSS feeds
• iChat Theater, which adds slides and movies and Photo Booth effects to iChat video
• Improved parental controls
• The complete Boot Camp release (it’s not disappearing as some had feared)
• Web Clip for bringing widgets to the Dashboard
• New PhotoBooth features, such as adding backdrops
• An enhanced Dictionary with Wikipedia built in
• A new iCal that supports the CalDAV standard
• An updated Frontrow for watching movies and TV shows at a distance with Apple Remote

The biggest surprise in this list may be the relatively short shrift Apple gave Time Machine, the feature that generated the most buzz at Macworld. The reason for this may be hidden in the footnote at the bottom of the press release:

*Requires an additional hard drive sold separately.

Backups are the bane of every power user’s existence. Time Machine is a worthy attempt to solve this perennial problem, but because it requires advance planning and a big exernal hard drive, most users probably still won’t bother.

Steve Jobs must have known this was in the works.

Asked again last month why he hadn’t built a 3G iPhone, Apple’s (AAPL) CEO replied that he was waiting for a chipset that would allow him to deliver 3G speeds with something close to the eight hour talk time the slower EDGE-based iPhone gets now. “Hopefully we’ll see that late next year,” he said.

He may not have to wait that long. In what could be a preview of the next-generation iPhone, chipmaker Broadcom (BRCM) announced yesterday that it had begun sending manufacturers samples of an integrated device it’s calling a “3G Phone On a Chip.” The chipset’s features read like an iPhone hold-out’s wishlist. They include:

• a 3G baseband transceiver supporting download speeds of up to 7.2 megabits per second
• Bluetooth 2.1
• an FM radio receiver
• an FM radio transmitter (for car stereo playback)
• multimedia support for a 5 megapixal camera
• 30 frames per second video with “TV out”
• support for EDGE, HSUPA, HSDPA, and WCDMA

It doesn’t do GPS, Wi-Fi or windows.

While Broadcom did not offer battery life estimates, it does describe the chip as “extremely low power.”

The BCM21551 was delivered to manufacturers in small quantities yesterday will be available in bulk for $23 apiece. This is one chip Jobs may be tempted to hoard, because if Apple doesn’t buy it, its competitors surely will.

Or not. In an oddly time piece, Blackfriar’s Carl Howe, who is usually pretty well plugged in to Apple, today published his five reasons why Apple’s iPhone Doesn’t Need 3G. Latency, he says, is more important than bandwidth. Besides, he adds, high bandwidth radio networks are more error prone. Hmmm.

For more on the Broadcom chipset, see Eric Bangeman’s piece in Ars Technica.