While the iPhone has been a hit in the U.S., analysts are becomming concerned that, in Europe, the high price of the iPhone and competition from others is keeping the Apple phone from being a similar hit, according to Business Week.

"Our research indicates that European shipments to date have been far below [expectations]," said analyst Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities.

BusinessWeek also cited Strategy Analytics who estimated that Apple sold 350,000 iPhones in 4Q last year, below their forecast of 500,000. They also estimated that sales in 1Q 2008 were 300,000.

However, Apple and the three European carriers have not officially disclosed sales numbers. In fact, the three carriers, UK's O2, France's Orange and Germany's T-Mobile all say they're happy with demand. The iPhone is "the fastest-selling device that we have ever had in the U.K." said Steve Alder, O2's iPhone director in Britain.

The implied difficulties in Europe suggest that Apple may have more difficulties elsewhere in the world, and that the revenue sharing mocel used so far could be a sticking point, as it has been reported to be with China Mobile.

iPO notes that the picture on iPhone sales in Europe is far from complete. One has to ask whether the iPhone is beating any single other phone in sales, even of those sales don't meet the expectations of some analysts. Other data, supplied by IntoMobile suggests exactly that, namely that while Apple can't compete with all the combined European mobile phones, it does better than any single phone including the Nokia N95. IntoMobile wrote:

"We previously mentioned that the iPhone has shown disappointing sales figures in the UK, but it seems that even 'laggard' iPhones sales on UK's O2 network are still outselling rivals. In fact, all three European markets are reportedly seeing sales of the iPhone outpacing those of its closest, and highly subsidized, competitors - a group that includes the HTC Touch, LG Prada, Nokia N95, and Nokia's E-Series handsets."

Others have pointed out that Europe is a 3G community, and Apple's sales are good considering that it's limited to the European EDGE 2.7G network. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has predicted that Apple's iPhone worldwide sales will double for the next two years, driven by iPhone 3G sales in Japan and China.