NYT discovers that the 1.4 million missing iPhones (not registered on their respective networks in U.S. and Europe) have landed up in, lo and behold, China. Well, a lot of them. Duh. Lots of them are in other Asian countries and other European countries where the iPhone hasn’t launched yet. I took my iPhone to India and gave it to my brother, who is using it on Airtel, after unlocking the phone. Now he’s a rockstar in his town…he could probably charge his college friends just to have a look.

The only hitch: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) may lose as much as $1 billion over the next three years as a result of non-collection of monthly royalties from its exclusive operator partners, according to some analysts.