Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.

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Question for you: What was the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009? What’s that? Apple’s iPhone? Wrong. According to market researcher NPD, it was Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve, which slipped past the iconic device in market share bolstered by Verizon’s Buy One, Get One promotion.

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Are Research in Motion customers opting for the company’s Curve and Pearl BlackBerries over the BlackBerry Storm, its new touchscreen smartphone? Or are they trading the Storm in for one of those older models? That would seem to be the implication of the company’s announcement today that its fourth-quarter profits could fall on the low end of forecasts despite good growth in subscriptions.

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Though its launched was marred by software glitches and a chorus of middling-to-scathing reviews, Research in Motion’s high-profile smartphone, the BlackBerry Storm, has actually sold fairly well.

Certainly, it hasn’t stumbled as badly as some reports have suggested. Verizon said this week that it’s sold one million Storm handsets since it began peddling them in the states on Nov. 21.

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Contrary to popular opinion, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Storm is not a smartphone. It’s a Netbook. So says Mike Lazaridis, the company’s founder and co-CEO, who apparently hasn’t seen an Eee PC lately. Asked by CNet Asia if he viewed Netbooks as a competitor to RIM’s BlackBerry devices, Lazaris, referring to the Storm, said, “These are Netbooks. They are just smaller.”

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Apple’s iPhone hasn’t supplanted Research In Motion’s BlackBerry as the gold standard of mobile business tools, but give it another year or so and it just might. According to new research from ChangeWave, the iPhone has steadily increased its market share, growing from just 11 percent in June to 23 percent. Meanwhile, the BlackBerry lost a point of market share, falling to 41 percent in the same period.

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Research In Motion’s downside guidance for the third quarter is playing hell with the company’s share price today. After market close Tuesday, RIM said revenues for the three months ended November will fall short of its earlier forecast. The company blamed the news on product-launch timing, general economic conditions and foreign-exchange volatility, but could there be something else at work here a well? Like an uncompelling product line?

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Not that there’s any reason to think otherwise, but the spam network business is not one that’s dependent on sales conversion rates. You’ve got to send a hell of a lot of spam to make a living at it.

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