CUPERTINO, CA — It’s not just bloggers that have noticed something funny going on with numbers related to the Apples insanely popular iPhone. Customers and investors had noticed during 2007 that although 1.7 million of the quarter-tablet personal computers with cell phone modems had been sold – only 900,000 of those have been fully activated through the device-exclusive mobile service provider, AT&T. In January of this year, Apple used Macworld to announce that the number had increased to 4 million iPhones sold – and “just at or slightly under 2 million iPhone customers” registered through AT&T.What’s up with that?

While some of the newest sales are outside of the United States and it’s possible that hundreds of thousands of domestic iPhone owners simply don’t care that much about talking on their expensive pocket toys, some believe that two things are happening: they aren’t all selling – and those that are aren’t all using authorized unlocking applications.

TechDirt.com proposes that a good number of those currently off the grid are “sitting on store shelves, piling up as unsold inventory,” calling into question the genuine consumer interest in the all-in-wonder vs. the promotional hype generated by Apple and the media. CNET’s News.com opines that even taking into account the 350,000 or so European sales, there are now 1.3 million units unaccounted for.

Regardless of how many have been sold vs. signed onto the AT&T network, one thing that has been crystal clear from the very first is Apple’s fervent desire to force iPhone owners into a relationship with the cell phone service provider if they want authorized – and therefore theoretically superior – applications. The company has limited the number of iPhones to be sold to any one individual, insisted that purchased be done using a credit card, and even warned that unauthorized unlocking software would run afoul of the company’s security measures, ultimately resulting in an expensive once-high-tech paperweight.

November 2007 changes in how the iPhone selects code to load from flash memory into main memory put a kink in the iPhone unlocking community, which still has not perfected a way around the new bootloader, although it continues to create software for devices purchased before November 9th, using risky hardware hacks on newer purchases, according to CNET.

Nonetheless, some experts project that as many as 1 million of the mysteriously unaccounted for iPhones were bought with no intention of running on AT&T’s network and every intention of being unlocked and used on other systems. If so, the fourth quarter of 2007 saw massive increases in unlocked iPhones in spite of Apple’s best efforts – but sales increased within expected levels.

Bloggers and mainstream journalists alike point out that unlocked iPhones are easy – if expensive – to find on sites such as eBay. They propose that equally tampered devices are likely available at both respectable and shady resale shops throughout the globe, as well. This will likely make it more difficult for Apple to achieve its desire to strong-arm European purchasers into an exclusive network usage agreement, thus losing a bit more of the profits available in such a monogamous deal – and potentially putting AT&T in a position to rethink its interest in such an arrangement.