News reports showed people lining up around blocks waiting for it. What’s more, even one pair of cable news reporters held up a cardboard mock-up, probably because they couldn’t get their hands on it.

The “it” in this case is Apple’s iPhone, which went on sale June 29th.

But how many iPhones did Apple and its wireless service partner AT&T sell during the first weekend? And did sales meet expectations?

Depends on who you talk to.

AT&T said it signed up 146,000 iPhone users during the first two days the cell phone was on sale. The only problem is that the 146,000 figure was well below analyst estimates, some of which predicted sales reaching higher than 500,000 units during the first few days.

But AT&T’s low figure was based on iPhone activations, not the actual number of units sold. And the telecom had its own problem with reports of failed activations occurring during iPhone=s first 48 hours of market life.

Nevertheless, AT&T’s announcement was blamed in part for Apple’s stock dropping $8.81 to $134.89 on NASDAQ, ending an 18 percent surge that resulted in $18 billion for shareholders.

And what did Apple say?

Waiting until markets closed on July 25th to release results for its fiscal third quarter – the last two days of which marked the first two days of iPhone sales – Apple reported 270,000 iPhones sold. While the figure wasn’t as high as those 500K estimates, it did represent healthy sales for Apple’s latest must-have gadget.

In fact, the iPhone capped what turned out to be a pretty good third quarter for Apple. The company’s net income was $88 million, translating to 92 cents per share, compared with $472 million, or 54 cents per share one year earlier.

Of course, Apple isn’t all iPhones. But with the media hype regarding the iPod / cell phone / media player hybrid, we wouldn’t blame you if you had forgotten that the company also sells other things. Like computers.

Specifically, the Macintosh, which represented a 33 percent growth over one year ago, resulting in 1,764,000 Macs sold.

“We’re thrilled to report the highest June quarter revenue and profit in Apple’s history, along with the highest quarterly Mac sales ever,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. “IPhone is off to a great start B we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales B and our new product pipeline is very strong.”

Of course, if Apple has trouble meeting Jobs’ iPhone sales prediction, he can always go on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” The famous “Collbert Bump” should be good for moving a few more units.