“Notwithstanding the slow recovery of demand from the enterprise sector, we are encouraged that industry momentum has turned positive following the steepest downturn in more than a decade,” said SIA President George Scalise.

Great news were it not for the fact that at $19.1 billion, August sales were down a horrific 16.1 percent year-over-year. Furthermore, for the first eight months of 2009, sales are at $133.8 billion–about 21.3 percent below this time last year.

So while it’s wonderful that we’re seeing these sequential improvements, it’s important to remember that the industry is still fairly deep in the abyss and has a long way to go before it climbs out.

According to the research outfit, Mac sales for July and August are up seven percent year-over-year. If this proves true, Apple (AAPL) should sell somewhere around 2.75 and 2.8 million Macs in the quarter, which would match or slightly exceed Wall Street consensus estimates. IPod sales should meet estimates as well, though NPD reports that year-over-year sales during July and August were down 16 percent.

Munster figures Apple will sell 9.5 million to 10.5 million iPods for the quarter. The Street is looking for 10 million, and with the launch of the newest nano, Apple will likely meet this goal.

“We are expecting reacceleration in the final month of the quarter given the new iPod nanos that shipped on 9/9,” Munster explained. “Also, iPod international is growing faster than domestic. In other words, we believe the actual reported numbers for iPod will be slightly better than NPD would suggest.”

“Based on our channel checks, the iPhone remains the best selling device at AT&T with both the new $200/$300 iPhone 3GS and $100 legacy iPhone selling very well,” Piper Jaffary analyst Gene Munster said in a research note today.

“In July, our checks had indicated store managers were strongly recommending the legacy iPhone,” Munster notes, “as we believe this was partially driven by store representatives hoping to make the sale with the 3GS stocked out combined with efforts to reduce existing inventory levels of the legacy iPhone. However, in August, our checks indicate store managers are increasingly recommending the 3GS, and we believe this is driven by improved availability of the 3GS at most AT&T stores.”

Munster summarizes: “Overall, the iPhone remains the best selling device and our August checks indicate the iPhone took share from BlackBerry, the Nokia E71x, and most other competitor products. Finally, in our checks at Best Buy, store managers indicated the iPhone was their best selling device with stores selling out of stock as soon as they received the Apple smartphones.”

A bullish assessment, with an even more bullish conclusion: Munster says he expects Apple (AAPL) to ship seven million iPhones in the quarter. If that’s truly the case, Apple should have no trouble beating Wall Street’s expectations for its current quarter despite the gloomy economy.

One last point worth noting here: Munster is not bullish on Apple’s event tomorrow. He describes it as a “non-event,” though he seems convinced Steve Jobs will host it. “We expect Steve Jobs to introduce a new iPod lineup with a new iPod touch, new nanos, and a new classic, with cameras in the new models,” he notes. “We expect the stock to trade off on a lack of surprising announcements.”

“Based on our channel checks, the iPhone remains the best selling device at AT&T with both the new $200/$300 iPhone 3GS and $100 legacy iPhone selling very well,” Piper Jaffary analyst Gene Munster said in a research note today.

“In July, our checks had indicated store managers were strongly recommending the legacy iPhone,” Munster notes, “as we believe this was partially driven by store representatives hoping to make the sale with the 3GS stocked out combined with efforts to reduce existing inventory levels of the legacy iPhone. However, in August, our checks indicate store managers are increasingly recommending the 3GS, and we believe this is driven by improved availability of the 3GS at most AT&T stores.”

Munster summarizes: “Overall, the iPhone remains the best selling device and our August checks indicate the iPhone took share from BlackBerry, the Nokia E71x, and most other competitor products. Finally, in our checks at Best Buy, store managers indicated the iPhone was their best selling device with stores selling out of stock as soon as they received the Apple smartphones.”

A bullish assessment, with an even more bullish conclusion: Munster says he expects Apple (AAPL) to ship seven million iPhones in the quarter. If that’s truly the case, Apple should have no trouble beating Wall Street’s expectations for its current quarter despite the gloomy economy.

One last point worth noting here: Munster is not bullish on Apple’s event tomorrow. He describes it as a “non-event,” though he seems convinced Steve Jobs will host it. “We expect Steve Jobs to introduce a new iPod lineup with a new iPod touch, new nanos, and a new classic, with cameras in the new models,” he notes. “We expect the stock to trade off on a lack of surprising announcements.”

That factoid comes via Web-tracking service comScore (SCOR), which says the two sites accounted for 17.4 percent of the display ads in the U.S. market in July.

News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, in the midst of a turnaround effort, has a slight lead over Facebook–9.2 percent of the market versus 8.2 percent. That makes sense since MySpace has always been aggressive about loading up with ads, while Facebook has been fairly reticent, much to the dismay of the “when are you going to monetize?” crowd. (Click table to enlarge.)

That’s something you knew intuitively, of course. But interesting to see it in graphic form.

Another data point you already knew, but may still find worthwhile to see in black and white: Just how small the scraps are for the rest of much of the social network ad world. By comScore’s count, the next eight-biggest social networks command a collective 1.4 percent of the market. (By the way, ever heard of MocoSpace.com before? Do you know anyone who claims to be a user?)

Remember that we’re just talking about overall impressions, not dollars. And ad impressions on social networks are famously cheap, so this stat only tells part of the story. But it’s an important part. It illustrates the potential that the services have, even if they haven’t capitalized on it (not that they haven’t tried).

Meanwhile, here’s a bonus table from comScore laying out the top advertisers on social networks. No surprise to see the likes of AT&T (T) and Sprint (S) here. But perhaps it’s noteworthy that Verizon (VZ), the strongest U.S. telco, spends the least on social media impressions. Meanwhile, social network app makers/services like Zynga are spending heavily.

(News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

My time-killing suggestion for the day: AdWeek’s “AdFreak” blog, which is packed with TV ads you probably haven’t seen. Did you know, for instance, that the Kool-Aid man was back?

Or perhaps you’ve wondered what a North Korean beer ad looks like (though honestly, you don’t need to go the full two-and-a-half minutes on this one; 20 seconds is fine):

Or maybe you want to see a guy doing a backflip in a wheelchair, as in this spot for Howstuffworks.com:

One word of warning: Don’t bother with the “Eat Canadian” ad, which is earnest and dull. Save that for Monday, as you’re easing into the week. Enjoy your weekend!

Some sites, like Discovery’s Planet Green, have already been playing around with the new OPA ads, but if you haven’t seen them yet, you can do it with a little bit of imagination. Think of a traditional Web ad as the equivalent of a yard sign. The new ones are billboards.

Like your descriptions more literal? Here’s the technical description of the new formats. By way of comparison, the column of text you’re reading now is 350 pixels wide.

The Fixed Panel: 336 wide x 700 tall, remains constant as the user scrolls to the top and bottom of the page.
The XXL Box: 468 wide x 648 tall, opens for seven seconds to 936 wide x 648 tall with 1/24x frequency.
The Pushdown: 970 wide x 418 tall, opens to display the advertisement and then after seven seconds, rolls up to 970 wide x 66 tall, with 1/24x frequency.

And um, here’s what a really big ad might look like on your desktop (click to enlarge).

If you’re knee-deep in the online advertising business, you’ll be interested in why these ad formats are being pushed by the Online Publishers Association instead of the better-known Interactive Advertising Bureau. I have heard some baroque/petty descriptions of squabbling between the two groups, whose membership overlaps but isn’t identical. But maybe we’ll come back to that some other time.

For now, let’s see if these deliver as advertised–that is, whether they get marketers to spend more money on the Web, without just plowing the money into Google (GOOG).

In your review of the new iPhone 3GS, you said that AT&T had changed its upgrade policy so some buyers of the previous model could get the new-customer price earlier than planned. Can you explain this in more detail?

Almost all cellphones in the U.S. are subsidized by the carriers to bring down prices. Typically, existing customers—who have already benefited from a subsidy—can’t upgrade at the lower new-customer price (in this case $199) until they reach a point in their contracts where this subsidy has been recovered. These dates vary, based on a formula that takes into account things like the customer’s monthly spending rate.

When some early adopters of the 2008 iPhone model, the 3G, discovered they wouldn’t immediately qualify for this $199 “standard upgrade” price—the same as the new-customer price—they got angry. So AT&T made a concession, but only a partial one. It declared that any customer who had been told he or she couldn’t get the $199 price until sometime in July, August or September of 2009 would in fact now be able to qualify for that lower price starting on the first day of availability.

This concession doesn’t apply at all to owners of the original 2007 iPhone, or even every owner of the 2008 3G model. And it isn’t based on when you bought your 3G, but when the system told you that you could buy the new model at the “standard” upgrade price of $199. You can check the price AT&T or Apple will charge you for an upgrade by going to www.att.com/iPhone and clicking on “Check upgrade eligibility.”

I’ve recently heard that the new Palm Pre smart phone is unable to import data from the old Palm Desktop program. In other words, if you have Palm Desktop filled with data from a previous Palm model, you’ll be unable to get that data into your new Palm Pre. Is this true?

No. While the Pre isn’t designed to repeatedly sync with the old Palm Desktop software, Palm does offer a program, for Windows and Mac, that will perform a one-time import of your old data from Palm Desktop. It can also do a one-time import of data from certain other desktop programs as well, including Microsoft Outlook on Windows, and iCal and Address Book on the Mac. This program will help you move your data to one of the online services, such as Google, with which the Pre is designed to sync continuously. The software is called the Palm Data Transfer Assistant and is free at http://bit.ly/3lIaZ.

I am contemplating purchasing the 17” MacBook Pro rather than the 13” or 15” models because the antiglare matte screen is offered only with the 17”. How bad is the glare on the smaller screens and how cumbersome do you find the larger 17” MacBook Pro?

For a laptop of its size, the 17” MacBook Pro is remarkably thin and light. But I did find it cumbersome to use in coach seats on airplanes and to cram into small briefcases. As for the glossy screens, which are now the most common option on many laptops, they bothered me at first, but I don’t notice the glare now. However, both of these are personal issues. So my suggestion is to go to a store and see for yourself.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.