Verizon recently announced that they had 30 million paid downloads of music "over the air" in the first quarter this year. This means that people are paying $1.99 for a song, or twice the price Apple and Verizon charge to download music to your desktop PC. The idea behind the premium is that it costs more to deliver music straight to your phone.

As FierceMobileContent editor Sue Marek points out, we're waiting to see what happens to Sprint's earnings. Sprint recently cut their music download price from (gulp) $2.49 per track to 99 cents. That's for a true over-the-air download, too, unlike Verizon.

Meanwhile, Apple hasn't promised over-the-air downloads for their upcoming iPhone. In fact, even if the iPhone could do it, it would be very slow, since the iPhone uses an older, slower data network.

Mobile Music Wars [FierceMobileContent]