Not that this should surprise anyone, but Apple has sold only 5,000 iPhones since last week when it officially launched. The phrase “officially launched” is key, since people there have been able to buy the iPhone on the gray market for some time now. And it’s a superior phone on the grey market, since the official phone doesn’t have Wi-Fi. That’s right: a smartphone nearly in 2010 that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made its debut in summer last year, but China as another big Asian market for Apple seems to react differently. The iPhone officially launched in China today, offered by China Unicom, one the country’s three big cell phone carriers. But our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing.

Keep in mind, 100,000 approved apps doesn’t mean 100,000 GOOD apps, but according to the App Shopper, a major milestone has been hit. There are a few technicalities though.

As many of you are aware, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple last week in the Federal District Court in Delaware. Nokia’s complaint alleges that Apple has infringed on 10 of Nokia’s patents for various, “fundamental” GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) technologies. In particular, the patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia believes that all 10 patents have been infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced back in 2007.

Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell what Nokia’s real problem is here.

Sportswear giant Nike has a nifty application in the App Store that allows you to create custom sneakers and order them straight away, with just a couple of taps. The app is in fact a mobile extension of NIKEiD, a program that allows customer to order personalized Nike shoes straight from the manufacturer. And an excellent extension it is.

The free app (iTunes link) has been available on the App Store since the beginning of this month, but surprisingly there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about it. Even despite this excellent video about it (embedded below).

We’ve covered a couple of Distimo reports in the past because they provide us with some valuable insights on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market based on the startup’s in-depth analysis of publicly available data. Now the company has added RIM’s Blackberry App World store to the fray, which gives us even more data points to compare the rivals’ app pricing and whatnot.

In the latest report (September 2009), Distimo notes software programs for Blackberry devices are considerably more expensive than comparable apps for competing devices/platforms.

In fact, the average price for apps is more than three times higher than the one for similar apps in the App Store and Android Market, which is sort of unbelievable. There’s not a single category where the average price of an app is lower than its equivalent on the latter two application storefronts, and the more serious, business-related tools are definitely much more expensive. (chart after the jump)

The free ride is over, ladies. Go ahead and fire up the Google Maps Apps for your iPhone (or iPhone touch), and you may well run into something you’ve avoided for so, so long: an ad. That’s right: Google Maps now shows advertisements. Things fall apart.

Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from “buy” to “neutral” (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it’s those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own “iPhone killer” was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do?

The iPhone 3G S launched a few months ago, but AT&T users haven’t been able to take advantage of a few much vaunted (and much needed) features as yet: MMS, Bluetooth file-sharing, and tethering are the Big Three. This, of course, despite the fact that AT&T is the “flagship” carrier! But never mind all that, because today we have some good news in the way of this latest bit of gossip: starting with iPhone OS 3.1, AT&T users will, in fact, be able to use MMS and Bluetooth file-sharing. Welcome to 2006, iPhone owners!

It’s not even a story any more that Apple loves to reject Apps from the App Store. Today’s entry in the Big Book of App Rejections is µMonitor, an App that monitors µTorrent that you have running on your PC. Apple rejected it because “his category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights.”

Provided Apple and/or AT&T don’t throw a fit, you’ll soon be able to use Rhapsody on your iPhone (and iPod touch). The App works over 3G and EDGE (and Wi-Fi, of course), streaming music from a library of more than 8 million songs.

Go ahead, I dare you to explain to me the utility you derive from playing 1080p video on your iPhone 3GS. A post on a Chinese forum suggests that the phone is perfectly capable of playing 720p and 1080p when encoded with H.264; Apple currently limits playback resolution to 640×480. The angle right now is, “How dare Apple artificially limit the resolution that we can play?” Well, one, it’s Apple, what do you expect and, two, can image how quickly the battery will deplete when playing 1080p video?