In September, analyst Gene Munster estimated for Apple Insider that 10 percent of the iPhones sold were bought by potential unlockers. "Judging from our checks, as much as 10 percent of the iPhones sold in September were purchased with the intention to be resold unlocked," he said at the time.

Well, he erred on Apple's side. The company acknowledged that around 250,000 of its iPhones were unlocked, out of the 1.4 million iPhones sold thus far. This amounts to 17 percent, or about one in six. The revelation was carried out by Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook on a conference call with analysts and investors Monday.

"Some number of these were sold to people that have an intention to unlock and where we don’t know precisely how many people are doing that, our current guess is there is probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that. Many of those happened after the price cut," he said.

Unlocking the iPhone may be good for customers who aren't going to be bossed around by Apple, but it hurts both Apple's and AT&T's businesses. Apple does not get its cut from AT&T if the device is not activated in their network, whereas AT&T can't "enslave" yet another customer in its service plans.

The number of unlocked iPhones jumped after Apple cut the price on the device last month by $200, Apple's COO Cook acknowledged. On a positive note, he alleged 95 percent of iPhone customers would recommend it to others, presumably people they like.

Also, Ars Technica quotes him as being "confident with shipping 10 million in the calendar year of 2008." This seems like a stretch, even if the iPhone is to be sold now in Europe too (unlocked). I can hardly see how they will ship more than, let's say, 6 million iPhones in 2008.

Strategy Analytics, a research company that tracks the mobile phone sales in US, revealed three days ago that Apple’s iPhone has become AT&T’s top selling device in Q3. Strategy Analytics predicted that the iPhone could become the top selling device in the US over the next 1-2 quarters. Currently Motorola’s RAZR V3 continues to be the top selling handset in US.

Also, Apple said it will open up its iPhone for software developers early next year, as previously rumored.