iPhone 3G was released on July 11, 2008, in twenty-two countries. It was released including the original six countries. Within five quarters, Apple sold over 6.1 million iPhones and 3.8 million iPhone 3G phone were sold in the second quarter of fiscal year 2009. Apple reached a huge figure of 21.4 million iPhone sold by end of March 2009.

Sales in Q4 2008 surpassed those of BlackBerry sales of 5.2 million units, which made Apple the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue after Nokia & Samsung. Approximately, 6.4 million iPhones are active in the US alone.

iPhone users in EU surpass all others in mobile media usage. More than 80% of them are from France, Germany and the UK using it to browse news and information on the mobile web, compared to 32% of other smartphone users. According to the survey, 42% of iPhone users normally visit social networking site on their device compared with the market average of 3% and 10% of smartphone owners. E-mail is another popular feature, with nearly 70% of iPhone users sending and receiving email with their device, compared with just 26% among other smartphone users.

Apple improved iPhone handset features and also reduced the price which had a significant on its uptake, especially in the European market. Despite its small user-base, iPhone is already in top 10 handsets for online browsing in the UK and in the top 5 in France and Germany. It’s giving devices like Nokia and Sony Ericsson a definite run for their money.

Some of the reasons why iPhone has been able to replace various popular smartphone available. iPhone applications normally run one at a time, although most functionality is still available when making a call or listening to music. The home screen can be accessed at any time by a hardware button below the screen. iPhone allows audio conferencing, caller ID, call merging, call holding, and integration with other cellular network features. For Example, if a song is played while a call is being received; it gradually fades out, and fades back when the call gets over. The design & layout of the music library is similar to that of an iPod. The iPhone can sort its media library by these criteria like songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audio books and compilations etc. iPhone uses a large font that allows users plenty of room to touch their selection. Internet access is available when the iPhone is connected to a local area Wi-Fi or a wide area GSM or EDGE network.

The iPhone 3G has a maximum download rate of 1.4 Mbps in the United States. The maps application can access Google Maps in map, satellite, or hybrid form. It can generate directions between two locations, while providing optional real-time traffic information. According to Google, iPhone generates 50 times more search requests than any other mobile handsets. For text input, iPhone has a virtual keyboard and also has automatic spell checking and correction, predictive word capabilities, and a dynamic dictionary that learns new words. iPhone also features an e-mail program that supports HTML e-mail, which enables the user to embed photo in an e-mail message, PDF, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint attachments to mail messages can be viewed on the phone. iPhone and iPhone 3G feature a built in fixed-focus 2.0 megapixel camera located on the back.

The iPhone 3GS has a 3.2 megapixel camera, with auto focus. It can be cropped on the device itself and directly uploaded to YouTube or other services.

There are over 65,000 third party applications already available at app store to date and are forecasted to reach a million marks very soon. More and more enhanced features are expected to come from Apple and to rule the mobile market very soon.