In the past two months, the most favorite riddle of the analysts and journalists from the tech world has been related to Apple and iPhone. After its launch on June 29, the number of phones that the company from Cupertino sold had been everybody’s favorite dilemma. After Steve Jobs announced last week the spectacular price cut and the fact that the one million sold units target will be achieved by the end of September, yesterday the Apple boss revealed that the objective had been achieved in only 74 days.

According to the Apple officials, the one million sold units also include the phones shipped to AT&T, from which the exact number of units that effectively were sold to the customers is unknown. In other words, the real number of iPhone owners isn’t so close to 1 million.

For example in July Apple said that in the first week end at launch it has sold 270,000 iPhones and AT&T revealed that during the same period 146,000 of the phones were activated. But this aspect is less important as Apple is celebrating its first million.

"One million iPhones in 74 days - it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with the iPod," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We can't wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.”

It isn’t very clear if the 200 dollar price cut had any role in this growth, but the role of the numbers that had been announced is to calm down the analysts which speculated that the iPhone sales aren’t going according to plan.

With the new $399 price and a new holiday season on its way, it could be anticipated that the iPhone will continue to sell in the same sustained rhythm.

In fact, the sales during the holiday season seems to be the new Apple’s target as Jobs stated in his open letter posted on the company website after early adopters of iPhone were enraged by the price cut.

“First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to 'go for it' this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone 'tent'. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.” Jobs wrote in his letter.

From this point of view it can be said that, despite the discontentment of the clients who bought the iPhone for $599, Jobs strategy is correct.

But along with the iPhone, Apple entered a market in which the success in measured in millions of phones sold every quarter.

For example, according to the latest survey regarding the mobile phone market issued by IDC, Nokia is the leader of the mobile phones market with a market share of 37%, which means that during the second quarter of 2007 the Finnish company has shipped 100.8 million units. In the same period Samsung has shipped 37.4 million units, while Motorola sold only 35.5 million units sold.

Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics have sold 24.9 million units and 19.1 million units respectively.

In these conditions what do the one million units sold mean? Essentially it means a great start for Apple. Let’s not forget that we are talking about a company that until now had nothing to do with the mobile phone market except maybe the collaboration with Motorola for the ROKR phone. Still Apple’s involvement had rather to do with the ROKR’s compatibility with iTunes than with the phone itself.

Apple demonstrated that, even though its expertise is connected to other domains, it is able to produce a revolutionary mobile phone that so far it seems to be success.

The question is what will follow from now on? Apple’s target, as it had even been announced by Steve Jobs in January, is to sell 10 million units by the end of 2008.

An objective that doesn’t seem so impossible, as Apple has arguments live innovation and price and performance and the iPhone is still to be launched in Europe and Asia.

Still in the last two months Apple had that in the world of mobile telephony, a product becomes obsolete faster than in other tech sectors, which probably explains the drastic decrease in price and the cancellation of the 4 GB model.

Since it is hard to believe that Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and the other giants won’t try to enter the competition, Apple will have to come up with other price cuts or new even versions of iPhone.

There are already rumors that Apple is preparing a new version for Europe with 3G capabilities and 16 GB of memory.

In Europe, business users and consumers in 18 of the EU’s 25 countries are benefiting from commercial HSDPA services and network deployments are underway in a further 4 countries. Generally speaking, 3G networks (UMTS, CDMA, EV-DO CDMA, HSDPA) are ubiquitous in Europe, whereas the US has focused its attention on the Wi-Fi networks. There are of course 3G networks in the US too (AT&T, which holds exclusive distribution rights for Apple’s iPhone has one, but coverage isn't quite up to Verizon's and Sprint's levels).

But let aside the rumors the 1 million units sold means that the real challenge for Apple is just started. Until now Apple’s redoubtable marketing machine has done its job, iPhone having a constant presence in the media since the moment it was announced. Let’s see what they will come up with next.