Recession, what recession? Apple sells 1 million iPhones over the weekend

Despite being in the middle of a pretty deep recession, people are still more than willing to fling open their wallets and throw money at Apple for an iPhone that's slightly faster than the old one.

According to Apple, a whopping 1 million of the new 3G S iPhones were sold over the weekend. That's not bad when you consider that this is a handset that will cost new customers (or, more specifically, qualified customers) $199 or $299 depending on capacity. Not only do you have to factor in the cost of the handset, but also the hefty two-year contract that goes with it. Existing iPhone owners looking to upgrade could face even higher costs.

However, to put these sales figures into perspective, they are similar to the first weekend sales for the 3G iPhone back when that was new.

Note: There are no figures for sales of the older, and cheaper, 3G handset.

Also from Apple is the news that as many as six million customers downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days of its release.

It seems as though Apple scored another jackpot. What I find impressive is how Apple never seems to miss the mark as to knowing when to put out an iPhone refresh. Even during these bad financial times, people still seem to have an insatiable appetite for iPhones.