New iPhone sales top 4m in three days

Apple Inc. says it has sold more than 4 million units of the new iPhone model in three days - meaning it's selling more than twice as fast as the previous model did when it launched last year.

Apple and its phone company partners started selling the iPhone 4S on Friday in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain. They are coming to 22 more countries by the end of the month.

When Apple launched the iPhone 4 last year, it sold 1.7 million in the first three days.

There are two more launch countries than last year, and there are also more phone companies that sell the phone. In the US, Sprint Nextel Corp. is the new carrier, joining AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.

On Friday, both AT&T and Sprint said the new phone had broken sales records. At Verizon Wireless, a lot of pent-up iPhone demand was satisfied with the February launch of the iPhone 4, the first iPhone for that company.