Has Apple surpassed 10m iPhones?

Seeking Alpha authors Andy Zaky and Turley Muller estimate that 9 months into 2008, Apple has already surpassed Steve Jobs’ widely quoted (and oft-ridiculed) projection of selling 10 million iPhones this year. In particular, they calculate that Apple sold 7-7.5 million units in Q3, the final quarter of the Apple fiscal year, building on the strong sales spurt with July’s release of the iPhone 3G.

They use a clever strategy of tracking serial numbers (IMEI) as a way to estimate how many phones have been built, and use convergent numbers from web browser stats.

Apple’s FYQ4 earnings release is due a week from Tuesday. If Zaky and Muller is right, Jobs will proudly proclaim that Apple has blown past the 10 million figure in hopes of supporting the stock.

So far the stock is in freefall, off even more than Google due to worries about consumer spending. Next week’s rumored announcement of a sub-$1K laptop won’t turn that around, but perhaps unexpectedly strong iPhone earnings could provide support for the stock.

More importantly, if Apple is lucky the announcement will correspond to a shift in the overall macroeconomy. In a rare example of local TV actually interviewing someone who knows something about the economy, our local NBC station tonight ran an interview with a really smart Chicago school economist who also happens to be a former Congressman and business school dean. Tom Campbell says the economy will keep falling until the Feds start spending the bailout money, hopefully in a few weeks.