Apple sold a million iPhone 3G in the first weekend itself a the phone went live in 21 countries on July 9. The original iPhone took 74 days to reach the magical figure. The company also registered 10 million downloads on its online application store in three days, though it is unclear how many of them were paid-for applications.

On the other hand, the race to unlock and jailbreak the new operating system on the iPhone 3G, called the iPhone OS 2.0, is about to end, with the iPhone Dev Team claiming that they have cracked the new operating system and are ironing out the bugs before making it available to end consumers. The iPhone is locked to a carrier and a user cannot install third party applications other than those via Apple’s application store. However, hacks like the one by the iPhone Dev Team enable users to not only unlock the phone but also install third party applications — a process popularly known as jailbreaking.

Apple will be at the receiving end if hackers manage to break into its latest OS as it will make the iPhone 3G enter new markets where Apple is planning to launch the product later this year. The original iPhone has already become a popular phone in most Asian countries, with China topping the charts at over half-a-million hacked iPhones. As the iPhone 3G has already been launched in Hong Kong, its proliferation into the Chinese and other Asian markets will become all the more easier.