In the Phone different forums, surur (with the help of marcol) has posted up some fine analysis on the question of all those missing iPhones we mentioned a couple weeks back. The question: whether or not iPhone sales had slumped over the holidays (they didn't), but more importantly, how big is the gap between what Apple says they've sold and what AT&T says they've sold. As you can see in the graph above, it's a big gap that's getting bigger.
I'd previously doubted that a significant part of that gap was unlocked iPhones and unsold inventory. It seemed like the 1.5 million gap had to be some error in reporting or other such strangeness. But based on what analysis is available, it's starting to look like "unlocked and unsold iPhones" are exactly what makes up that gap.
The real question, then, is what the ratio is of unlocked to unsold. Actually, the real question is what does this gap tell us about how Apple is going to be able to talk about the iPhone. Read on for the answers to both questions, after the break!
