Sillicon Alley Insider - Dan Frommer | August 11, 2008 2:59 PM

We already know Apple’s iPhone 3G is a big hit. But is it possible that they’ve already sold 3 million of them, as former T-Mobile exec-turned-consultant Michael Cote tells Fortune? Sure, why not?

Apple sold 1 million 3G iPhones in its first three days of sales, July 11-13. That means they would need to have sold another 2 million in the last 28 days, or approximately 71,400 phones a day.

Last Christmas, the company sold 2.3 million iPhones in the December quarter, or about 25,000 a day. But that was at $399, and mostly in the U.S. — European sales in the U.K., France, and Germany started later in the quarter, and were relatively mild.

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BUSINESSWEEK - Wireless August 6, 2008, 12:01AM EST

With the debut of the new iPhone 3G, rival phonemakers and wireless operators—and possibly Apple—will feel the impact

by Olga Kharif

Last year, when Apple (AAPL) unveiled its iPhone and made it available in the U.S. exclusively from AT&T, the debut sent ripples throughout the cell-phone industry. Handset maker Palm suffered as consumers swooned for Apple’s phone, according to surveys by consultancy NPD. AT&T benefited by pulling subscribers from rival carriers Alltel (AT) and T-Mobile USA (DT).

So will Apple’s new phone, the iPhone 3G, have a similar effect? Early evidence since the new device’s July 11 debut suggests it will have even broader impact, in part because the entry-level model sells for $199, compared with $499 for the original version. As a rough measure, take last year’s impact and double it. In the first 12 days since the iPhone 3G hit the market, the device sold at twice the rate of its predecessor, according to AT&T (T), which hasn’t made more recent data available yet. And analysts expect this quick pace to continue for at least a few months: The iPhone 3G likely sold up to 700,000 units in the few weeks of July alone, estimates Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research. Apple sold about 1.1 million iPhones in all of the third calendar quarter of last year (BusinessWeek.com, 7/22/08).

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InformationWeek - July 21, 2008 04:00 AM

Apple’s iPhone 3G may be hogging the headlines, but there is a slew of other smartphones from HTC, Samsung, RIM, Nokia, LG, and GPS-maker Garmin, that can offer the same, if not better features.

By Marin Perez InformationWeek

While the iPhone 3G has undoubtedly been a hit — with over 1 million sold in three days — it’s not for everyone. Gripes are piling up about the mandatory AT&T (NYSE: T) service, the camera, the lack of a physical keyboard, and some of the decisions made behind the Apple App Store.Fortunately, there are multiple handsets that can provide similar, if not better experiences than Apple’s latest smartphone.

While the iPhone 3G’s enterprise capabilities are a highly-touted, some IT departments may still be nervous about it. But, those departments are likely to have experience with BlackBerrys, and Research in Motion is readying its next generation of smartphones.
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Silicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | July 11, 2008 1:54 PM

One of our kind Boston-based hedge-fund contributors files this report:

I did a little lunchtime research to see how the iphone release is going and here are my findings:

AT&T store: Long line of about 30 people at the AT&T store on Boylston, security guard outside, line appeared to be moving a bit slowly and people in line were anxiously asking store folks if they were sold out of any of the memory size/colors yet. Clerk said, “no” but he seemed a little panicked and unconvinced this state would last. Looked as if there were about 10 people in process inside.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Fred Wilson | July 11, 2008 1:50 PM

I’ve been thinking about this question for the past six months as we have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the iPhone app store and with it, the iPhone app ecosystem.

iPhone apps have been out there since the emergence of jailbreak but its clear the launch of the app store legitimizes this market.

We’ve made one investment in the Facebook app ecosystem, Zynga, which is the largest network of gaming apps on Facebook and the other large US-focused social nets. And we’ve made one investment in the iPhone app ecosystem with Pinch Media, which provides free analytics and an advertising system to monetize free iPhone apps.

So as we’ve watched Pinch launch its services to the iPhone developer market, I’ve been wondering what will be similar between these two ecosystems and what will be different?
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Silicon Alley Insider - Dan Frommer | July 11, 2008 12:10 PM

No surprise: Apple seems to have stocked its own retail stores with many more new iPhone 3Gs than it gave out to carrier partner AT&T.

As of noon Friday, ten of ten AT&T (T) stores we contacted in Manhattan and Brooklyn were already sold out of iPhones — or didn’t have enough left for the people in line.

One crazy rep did suggest coming back tomorrow. Apparently said rep didn’t understand how this works: People who want to buy a 3G iPhone today want to buy an 3G iPhone today.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Dan Frommer | July 11, 2008 11:14 AM

Thousands of people across the country are in the process of buying new iPhones, and many of them are chirping about it on Twitter. Snap consenus: They love the new phones, and they hate the crappy Apple (AAPL) and AT&T’s (T) activation servers . Below: Real-time Twitter messaging about the iPhone, courtesy of Summize, the search engine that’s very l