Cupertino (CA) – Apple announced that it has sold more than one million iPhone 3Gs over the weekend. However, it remained unclear whether that number included the phones of the second batch AT&T was already pre-selling and the number of phones that actually could be activated.

"iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in a prepared statement. "It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world."

These numbers and especially the comparison to the first iPhone have to be taken with a grain of salt, as the device is available in 21 countries right from the start and not just one. The estimate comes in at the lower end of the scale of sales expectations, as most analysts have been predicting sales of more than one million units. Some estimates even put sales estimates into the three to six million unit range.

Given the rocky start of the iPhone with some users around even stating today that they have not been able to activate their iPhone, we are a bit surprised that Apple stays on its PR path boasting how many people actually purchased the phone. Instead of stating that the “iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," CEO Jobs perhaps should have issued an apology to all those who were left with a bricked phone over the weekend.

Apple also said that more than 10 million applications have been downloaded from the company’s AppStore and a platform that now includes more than 800 applications. More than 200 applications are offered for free, Apple said. "The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly."

Analysts estimated only 425,000!

Jul 14, 2008 10:22     

The 3-6 million number is BY THE END OF THE YEAR! Apple only started high volume production a couple of weeks ago. The estimate for this weekend was 425,000 worldwide. Apple clearly blew away all expectations for the weekend, though I agree that it may include ATT's pre-sales.
Adam report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

just got one...

Jul 14, 2008 16:42     

well, got the last iphone from my apple store today... the line was not too long but apple was miss handling the situation. first then said there is no phone in the morning, then they got some ..so it was suprise to the apple store workers...then there is the "I can't tell you how many phone there are available" even when people are lining up at the store... And during the process, they don't even inform the door man how many is left...so people just line up for 1-2 hours and then they run outside and said ... "we have no more".....so it piss off so many people...... they should have done 1 phone at a time instead of letting people open 5 lines if they wanted to....and then let others wait outside for ever when there is no phone... also the activation was more like 20-30 min each person...so a line a 10-15 people takes hours... it's even worst then a att or sprint store. I finally got mine and returned the samsung instinct... the instinct is good at voice dial and gps...but very weak on browser and email client...which is primary what I needed the phone to do... the instinct is a 80% as good as iphone and there is a few thing it has that even iphone doesn't do... but consider the slow default browser on the fast network...it kind of a turn off to pay 30$ a month extra to get crappy internet and email.. so there goes the instinct back to sprint and iphone to my belt clip...

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well, found more bad stuff.

Jul 15, 2008 00:42     

well, the screen only rotates in browser...and so is keyboard in landscape mode.. it's so lame that I can't do landscape mode keyboard in email or texting...it's not like the keyboard is not available in the source code... The Samsung instinct I dump can switch to landscape keyboard at any time when typing by pressing a extra key on the keyboard... apple should learn from that... it's hard to type fast when it's in vertical mode... the keys are so close together.... I found it much harder to type on iphone in vertical mode than the instinct in horizontal mode that is the default..... I just don't get why is it not possible to rotate the screen for email for better typing.. I have small hand and still it's very hard to type on iphone. I hope they got a fix soon...

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