So Apple announced on Monday July 14, 2008 that it had sold its one millionth iPhone™ 3G on Sunday, just three days after its launch on Friday, July 11. So what?

So far so good in the Apple inc. global press release, followed by the usual evangelical, prosaic quotation from the infectious and charismatic Steve Jobs - but if you do the maths, is playing the M-card really that impressive?

Sure, it took 74 days for the original iPhone to reach the one million golden sales target but that was a US-only launch, remember.

iPhone 3G is now available in 21 countries Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the USA . 

Now let's say sixteen of those countries are selling a couple of thousand each and then we pick the big sales volumes countries out for inspection: Germany, UK, Italy, Hong Kong and the USA. 

Then let's say we weight sales in favour of the US, that's still only coming in at around 200,000 devices sold in USA, which is 70,000 less than the launch of the 2.75G iPhone a year ago.

All pure conjecture at this stage, folks, but one thing is for sure - the Emperor's New Clothes are well and truly being paraded by analysts, media commentators and, apparently, Apple themselves.

What we can't escape is a slowdown in luxury mobile devices across the globe due to the inter-recession even Sir Steve can't combat.

Note: Mediacells was the analyst to most closely forecast the inital sales of the iPhone at launch in 2007 – getting to 6% of the actual sales volumes.