Apple CEO Steve Jobs: 1 million iPhone 3G S sales

When I was queuing outside my local O2 store to get my hands on a new 16GB iPhone 3G S, I did not think for one moment that the handset was going to do that well. The reason for this was simple, there were only about 10 of us in the queue and there were none queuing outside The Carphone warehouse.

However, I was wrong, as it seems that iPhone customers could not get enough of the latest handset from Apple. According to Cnet News, there have been 1 million sales of the iPhone 3G S, on top of this; 6 million people have already downloaded the new iPhone OS 3.0.

This must be big news for Apple, as CEO Steve Jobs has made his first public comment since going on leave for health reasons. He said, “Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” Jobs said in a statement. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.”

We reported a few weeks back that analyst only expected Apple to shift 500,000 3G S phones in its first weekend. This shows how popular the iPhone still is, and that does not bode well for the likes of the Palm Pre, who must have taken a hit in sales this weekend.

Let us explain just how big of a deal this is, when the first iPhone launched in 2007, it sold 270,000. The iPhone 3G sold around 1 million units on its first weekend when launched back in 2008, and that was in 21 countries. The iPhone 3G S as we mentioned above sold 1 million units on its first weekend, and that was in just eight countries.