Technology research firm Gartner has clarified its earlier statements about the 3G iPhone. More precisely, Gartner said that its reporting on some Asian rumors about a 10 million units 3G iPhone order by Apple was wrongly interpreted as a prediction.

"If Apple was to place an order, than 10 million would be a reasonable number," Gartner's Bob Hafner said. "And we absolutely believe that in the next-generation iPhone 3G will be there," he said. Thus he played down the hype generated by one of their analysts, Ken Dulaney, who recently said Apple may have ordered 10 million iPhones that support 3G networks, according to some rumors circulating in Asia (the iPhone is manufactured in China).

In addition, based on the information provided by his Asian sources, Dulaney speculated that that the so-called 3G iPhone will use an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display.

The 3G iPhone was requested especially by the European mobile carriers. In Europe, business users and consumers in 18 of the EU 25 countries are benefiting from commercial 3G services, and network deployments are underway in another 4 countries.

Digg founder Kevin Rose recently claimed that Apple is currently developing a 3G iChat for the 3G iPhone. In his podcast, he also alleged that the new iPhone will feature two cameras, as nearly all 3G mobile phones have.

Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group Tom Gibbons told Forbes in an interview earlier this week that “it’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone. To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.” Are we going to see Microsoft becoming a major provider of third-party appas for the iPhone?