Apple iPhone sales tally tops 17m

Apple has sold more than 17m iPhones since the gadget first went on sale in June 2007, the company has revealed.

At least 13.7m of that total were sold during 2008 alone, Apple's head of iPhone and iPod development, Greg Joswiak, claimed today.

Speaking in Cupertino ahead of the anticipated demo of the third major version of the iPhone operating system, Joswiak said the total number of devices running that system software is now more than 30m, if you include the iPod Touch, which also uses the iPhone OS.

Joswiak went on to say that thus far, some 800m applications have been downloaded for the iPhone OS platform, which works out, we'd note at more than 26 per device, so we'd say that the total includes updates, which are handled by the iTunes App Store as separately billed - even when free - downloads.

Even so, it shows just how rapidly the platform has taken off, and you can see why Apple's handset rivals are all keen to start doing providing application shops themselves. ®