Beloved

A mere month after its debut, Apple has sold three million iPhone 3Gs, reports analyst Michael Cote of Cote Collaborative (via CNN).

One million 3Gs were sold on opening weekend, vastly outstripping sales of the original iPhone — which hit a million sales after 74 days.

The numbers beat Wall Street forecasts, which estimated Apple's quarterly sales would total three or four million. But the 3G had help: its price was half of the original iPhone's, better positioning it to capitalize on consumer enthusiasm for the touchscreen design, CNN wrote.

Touchscreen is currently considered an "it" characteristic in the mobile style market. As a basis of comparison, Motorola's RAZR — which made thin phones cool — sold 100 million units.

International sales also helped. The iPhone 3G is available in 22 countries compared to the original iPhone's four. Apple plans to broaden sales to 70 countries by year's end.

Cote observed Apple is enjoying "unprecedented demand" with no signs of waning. His only concern was that insatiable demand would stifle Apple's ambitions to expand to other countries, in the same way that unexpectedly high demand for Amazon's Kindle put product deliveries in stasis for months.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs also reported the iTunes App Store delivered over 60 million programs to users in its first month. Most were free, but the store nonetheless averaged $1 million in app sales per day — totaling $30 million in sales within a month.

Jobs claims he has "never seen anything like this in my career for software."