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While we haven’t seen the weekend sales numbers for the iPhone 3G, we do know that the launch could have gone a bit smoother. The whispers turned into yells early Friday morning, as customers began complaining that Apple simply could not get their phone activated. This happened basically across the board, as the iPhone launched in 21 countries. So it comes as no surprise that the global iTunes servers slowed down a bit, rendering many unable to receive service at first. It’s almost as if this fits some elaborate unwritten movie script.

It appears that the problem has worked itself out, as there seem to be no further reports on the activation problems. Apple tried to remedy the problem by having customers complete the activation process at home. When the original iPhone launched, customers performed the entire activation process on their home computers.

While we don’t know global numbers, we do have some tidbits from abroad. Rogers asked employees to hold off on purchases, so that there would be enough for customers. U.K. provider O2 said it was selling 40 iPhone an hour. There was a craze in Japan, as many stores with 1,000 units each sold out. And Deutsche Telekom says it sold more than 15,000 units on the first day of release.

So there’s plenty of success to discuss with the iPhone 3G’s launch. The activation problem was just a rather frustrating bump in the road.

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