8 million iPhones sold; 10m by end of September

According to a piece at Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog Apple has sold 8 million iPhones to date. But that's not an official stat from Apple, it's an approximation based on collected International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers.

A joint project of AFB and Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board have been collecting iPhone IMEI numbers and recording them on a big Google speadsheet here.

According to the IMEIs Apple has manufactured at least 5,649,000 iPhone 3Gs. When you add to that the 2.4 million first-generation iPhones that Apple reported selling in the first six months of 2008, you get a total of more than 8 million iPhones.

With Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn turning out more than 800,000 units per week, Apple appears to be on a pace to build its 10 millionth iPhone before the end of September.