Apple announced that it has sold its 1-millionth iPhone. The company had predicted it would sell 1 million handsets by the end of the third quarter, and with weeks to spare, Apple says it has met its goal.
The company has said it hopes to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.
Meanwhile, according to a report in BusinessWeek, Apple may be looking to bid at the FCC's upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction. Rumors mostly have been circulating about Google's possible entrance into the wireless market via the spectrum auction, but BusinessWeek says that two sources are claiming that CEO Steve Jobs has studied the possibility of bidding in the auction.
The report continues to say that at least one source told the magazine that Apple was thinking that the hassles of running a national network would not outweigh the profits to be gained from no longer having to partner with network operators. The magazine's other source seemed to think that Apple was still in favor of the benefits of dropping carrier partners.
Apple has previously made statements to the effect that working with networks has not always been ideal for the company. Before entering the handset market, the company dismissed carriers as being little more than "dumb pipes" that carry more innovative vendors' devices and services.
Still, becoming a network operator would not be an automatically lucrative gamble for Apple. Even with the purchase of spectrum licenses, the company would have to start from scratch building a national network, most likely funneling R&D resources away from creating new devices like the iPhone. However, if Apple were to build out its own network, analysts speculate, the company could move away from a hardware-centric model, where the Mac is the center of a digital lifestyle, to a more service-oriented business model.