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The website claims that Apple chief executive will reveal European sales figures tomorrow, when he opens the annual San Francisco Mac expo, but in common with standard Apple practice the company does not want to reveal country-by-country breakdowns: valuable market data that would be useful to its competitors.

Anecdotal reports suggest that the handset has not sold well in O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores and that is the feeling of an unnamed senior industry source who spoke to This is Money.

"The iPhone has not been a huge product for either O2 or Carphone. Particularly in the current market, no one wants

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to buy an expensive phone with a very expensive 18-month contract."

But according to O2 chief executive Matthew Key, 200,000 UK iPhones have now been connected. If they are not selling in O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores, they must be shifting at Apple's own retail outlets and online store.

However well the iPhone is selling, it is clear that those who buy it are using it as much more than a phone. Figures from Google show that traffic to its website from the Apple handset surpassed traffic from any other mobile platform over the holiday season, despite having a market share that is just a fraction of that taken by the Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry platforms. Yahoo has also said that the iPhone accounts for a "disproportionate' amount of its mobile traffic.

Google and Yahoo's experience is borne out by data from Net Applications' monthly survey of web usage, which puts the iPhone ahead of all other mobile platforms.