Global sales figures predictions for iPhone

Apple's U.K. network carrier O2 last week confessed heavy iPhone sales across its stores, a move matched by also strong sales in the U.S. at AT&T.

Dominic Hulewicz, O2's head of convergence services, admitted, "We're seeing phenomenal demand. I was staggered."

The demand was sufficiently strong Apple's iPhone activation servers at iTunes couldn't cope, causing untold customers to wait for hours to get their device working.

An O2 spokesman last week said: "Demand is really high. In some of our stores we have been selling 40 iPhones an hour - the same level of sales those stores usually do in a day."

O2 this morning confirmed itself to have sold out of its initial launch allocation of iPhones, promising new stock will be bought into stores this week. Availability will be revealed on the O2 website. Meanwhile, in the US, Apple ran out of iPhones at 95 of its US retail stores.

Analysts have begun number-crunching the news, with RBC Capital Market's Mike Abramsky predicting global iPhone sales on the launch weekend would reach one million units.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests global sales of around 425,000 units, 225,000 of these in the US. Munster predicts Apple will sell 4.08 million iPhones this quarter.

"We thought it was going to be less because of the activation problems on the first day, but what we found is that virtually every store had a line and many stores were sold out,' Munster told Bloomberg. Reflecting on the activation anxieties, he said, "The summary is that demand is good, execution was average."

Others are more sanguine. Investors at the Apple Finance Board suggest between 600,000 to 800,000 iPhone sales in the US alone.

Dominic Hulewicz, O2's Head of Convergence Services, explained the mass appeal of the Apple mobile: "We have people who were early adopters of the iPhone; now we also have demand from the corporate market." Hulewicz also notes cheaper, subsidized iPhone prices to have bought in more price conscious shoppers, while the fact that it's possible to program for the device has also attracted a hardcore of mobile technology hobbyists.

Hulewicz also revealed a little anecdotal evidence to support the proposition that the iPhone will boost Mac sales. "I had never used an Apple product and I've been in the mobile and IT industry since 1994, but I very quickly took to the iPhone."

He explained that O2 has iPhone debugging tools which work on Macs. As such, the executive had a MacBook to run those tools. He took the Mac home one night, his wife loved it, and they ended up buying their own Mac. 'Now it seems like I do everything in Apple."

Another switch is also pretty significant: "I'm a long-time BlackBerry user. That is now consigned to the draw. I've been using my iPhone for everything since we got iPhone Software 2.0," he said.