O2 started taking pre-orders for the iPhone 3G on its website. But went out of stock due to huge demand within minutes. O2’s Sales director later said, “We have been working continuously with them (Apple) to get as much stock for UK as possible. Unfortunately they have only been able to supply a small proportion of the number of phones we asked for, because they are launching simultaneously in 22 countries.” It is not just O2 but all the carriers around the world are expecting iPhone shortage at the launch time. O2 says a rush of as many as 13,000 iPhone per-orders per minute, brought down its online orders for the iPhone 3G. O2 believes that they will have a few dozen iPhones at each O2 or Carphone Warehouse stores on July 11th and the inventory will last only a few minutes. The Australian carriers Telstra and Optus will get less than 80,000 iPhones between them. Together both the companies have more then 2,000 stores bringing the total number of iPhone to less than 40 per store for the first week of launch. Vodafone in New Zealand believes that they will have around 25,000 phones for the launch week. Softbank of Japan says that they will have iPhone shortage for at least first three weeks after the launch. US will get the maximum share of the iPhones at the time of launch, but here also no one knows how long the stock will last. It is believed that some smaller countries might not even get 10,000 iPhones for the launch day. Most carriers around the world have already said that they will have next to nothing in iPhone allocation and the inventory will be snapped up within minutes. The iPhone 3G will be released in 22 countries on July 11th and on July 12th we will know exactly how the launch went…