Almost lost in yesterday's tech news was Google's announcement that it has released an application for the iPhone that consolidates several of its Web services such as e-mail, search and calendar functions into a single interface.

Owners of an iPhone (or an iPod Touch) need only visit Google.com to access the new goodies; no download is required. A single Google software engineer, Steve Kanefsky, envisioned the feature after being impressed with the iPhone's large touch screen as well as the inclusion of the full Safari Web browser.

According to various rumours, it is next Saturday which the new firmware should arrive for the iPhone. This version 1.1.3 would bring two great innovations: a dictaphone function and the possibility of using the APPLE telephone like a hard disk.

The advertisement of the near release of a iPhone 3G made early adopters of the first version of the APPLE telephone grimace. But they can be comforted by thinking that in a few days, their telephone will be enhanced by two new functions.

The British and the Germans queued up dutifully for their Apple iPhones, but when the devices finally arrived in Paris last week, the French went nuts.

On day one, France Telecom's Orange division sold 12,000 iPhones, according to Metro International, easily beating T-Mobile's first-day sales in Germany, a country with one third more people (82 million vs. 61 million) and 50 percent more Internet users (52 million vs. 34 million) (stats). After just 21 hours, 17 percent of Orange France stores had sold out, according to O'Grady's Powerpage.

And today, France Telecom announced that it sold nearly 30,000 iPhones in the first five days, 48 percent of them to new customers (link). That's nearly one iPhone for every 2,000 Frenchmen (and women). In the United States, Apple and AT&T sold 270,000 iPhones in that first frenzied weekend last June, or one for every 1,111 Americans.

iPhone sales around Europe have been disappointing, with the French only pocketing 30,000 in the first five days - though that's three times the number T-Mobile managed to shift in Germany. But that's not stopped Google releasing an optimised version of its mobile application suite specially designed for the finger-driven interface.

In the UK O2 won't say how many iPhones it's managed to sell. Our information is that fewer than 30,000 have been activated in Blighty, though apparently many more are waiting under the tree for a Christmas-day activation.

All this compares badly with the 270,000 sold in the USA in the first week....

Apple Inc.'s iPhone may be new to Europe, but concerns about the product's exclusive distribution contracts aren't.

Investors and Wall Street analysts have long pointed to how Apple is cloistering the red-hot gadget by striking lucrative deals to give a single operator per country the exclusive rights to sell it.

Apple Inc.'s new 3G iPhone is set to hit store shelves by late May or early June 2008, CNBC reported Thursday, citing a source close to Asian manufactures that are working with Apple.

The iPod Touch is also selling better than expected during the holiday season. A factory working with Apple is increasing production of the iPod Touch for the current quarter to 5.1 million units, the network reported.

No, this is not a hoax, in-store promotion, or a figment of this writer's imagination. In fact, one can already get iPhones in Canada for one (1 Canadian) dollar a piece.

How is that possible? While we don't want to disappoint our Canadian readers that can already buy the iPhones, this is not exactly the same product you're thinking about.

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