“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apples CEO who has recently undergone surgery. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apples revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.”

Today is the first day that Steve Jobs has made an announcement since he took leave several months ago. Word has it, Steve Jobs will be returning to the company from leave in the next few weeks but only part-time as he still is recovering.

The sales of the iPhone 3G S have already out-sold the original iPhone by nearly 750,000 in the first weekend sales.

Apple is doing extremely well with the launch of the iPhone 3G S, especially with the release of the Palm Pre recently and the soon to be released myTouch 3G from T-Mobile. The Apple store has over 50,000 apps, so the community is definitely extremely strong and customers are very loyal to Apple can the same be said about other phone manufacturing companies?

Unlike the original iPhone, which remained exclusive to the US for many months and then a handful of European countries, the iPhone 3G is already available in over 40 countries and the number will swell up to 70 before the end of this year. Mind you, the iPhone 3G is not yet available in Russia, which is expected to be one of the biggest markets for the device, after the US.

Meanwhile, in India, the iPhone 3G sales are yet to pick up on either carrier (Airtel and Vodafone) amidst media reports about the ‘flaws’ in the device and its high price. But that’s another story.

Hamid Akhavan told Focus, delivery problems that left customers waiting for weeks to get their hands on the new, faster version of the iPhone had been solved and that the backlog would be cleared by the end of the month.

“Our (sales) expectations were surpassed,” Akhavan said in an interview to be published on Monday, adding the carrier had sold 75,000 iPhones in Germany alone.

Akahavan said distribution had hit a snag as Apple had decided to launch the iPhone in 22 countries at the same time.

The latest iPhone from Apple Inc has faster, third-generation (3G) Web connections when compared with the first iPhone that was launched in mid-2007.

But users around the world have complained about dropped calls and inconsistent Internet speeds, with the phone often reverting to a slower technology known as Edge even in 3G areas.

Last week, Apple Inc issued a software update to help fix connection problems that led to a flurry of online complaints from customers.

T-Mobile, which also sells the iPhone in the Netherlands and in Austria, received complaints from Dutch customers but none from German and Austrian ones, Akhavan said.

Telecoms analyst Michael Cote of the Cote Collaborative made the claims in chat with CNN. A former T-Mobile executive, the media outlet says he has been “extremely accurate with wireless predictions in the past.” Michael went on to say if that demand keeps going up thanks to the iPhone 3Gs price point, consumer enthusiasm, and international sales:

They are seeing unprecedented demand. The demand is so strong it may impact or delay the new countries coming on.

Apple – being Apple – refused to comment on Cote’s claims that the computer-cum-iPod-cum-iPhone-cum-pro software and education solutions company is seeing “unprecedented demand”.

The three million figure is much higher than Wall Street analysts had anticipated, CNN informs. Many analysts had simply expected quarterly sales of up to four million…not monthly sales of three million…

Apple had promised to sell 10 million iPhones within a year. And they have the capacity to produce 40 million iPhones a year! So the big question, how many are they really going to sell in a year?

Three days after the new iPhone’s July 11 debut, Apple announced that it had sold 1 million iPhones.

Cote believes demand may ultimately fully outstrip supply, particularly as the device ships in new markets. “The demand is so strong it may impact or delay the new countries coming on,” he said.