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Apple's latest financial results documented total sales of 3.75 million iPhones to the end of December. AT&T revealed that it had activated two million in the US, while around 350,000 are thought to have been sold in Europe, according to figures from the three official carriers.

That leaves some 1.4 million iPhones unaccounted for. The question is: how many of those have been unlocked and how many are sat in warehouses, waiting to be sold.

Gene

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Munster, an analyst for Piper Jaffray, estimates that based on Apple's normal channel inventory for Macs and iPods, around half a million are unsold, meaning that more than 800,000 have been unlocked.

That assumes that Apple has been able to manage iPhone inventory as successfully as it has for its other products and did not overestimate demand. But it seems fairly safe to say that around one in very four iPhones has been hacked.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, said recently that unlocking is a sign of the iPhone's appeal and a "good problem to have". But it is also possible that the more handsets are unlocked, the more difficult it may be for Apple to demand the revenue-sharing deals that it has struck to date by granting exclusive national rights to the device.

RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky sides with Cook.

"Unlocked sales, though a headache for carriers, are positive for Apple and in our view bode well for global iPhone demand," he wrote in a note to investors, adding that they could enable Apple to exceed its target of 10 million sales by the end of this year.