Apple’s stock dipped nearly 5 percent early this morning on news from AT&T that it activated only 146,000 iPhones during the last two days of the quarter. The number fell short of Wall Street analysts’ estimate of 200,000 iPhones sold in the first two days. If these folks spent a little more time considering the matter, they might realize that the iPhone’s sales numbers probably are a lot closer to 200,000 than 146,000.

Let’s recall, first of all, that the iPhone did not go on sale Friday, June 29 until 6 p.m. local time in each U.S. time zone. So the first two days of sales was more like a day and a half, if that. Second, and much more importantly, we’re talking about iPhone activations here, not actual sales. Have people already forgotten the uproar over AT&T’s slow activation of the iPhones in the first few days? For many iPhone buyers the process took just minutes, but large numbers could not get their iPhones activated for hours or even days. And remember, too, that people who bought on Friday night didn’t even have a full day to get activated.

A poll on the Gizmodo Web site taken the week after the iPhone went on sale showed 33 percent of the respondents still not activated with 13 percent saying activation took “a day or two.” While Web polls by nature are unscientific, they frequently will give you a ballpark idea of what’s going on. If 46 percent of iPhone buyers could not get activated until Sunday or later, that would mean Apple and AT&T actually sold something like 270,000 iPhones. The actual percentage probably is significantly lower, but if just 25 percent of the activations were delayed past the first two days, that would bring us right back to the original estimate of 200,000 iPhones sold.

Apple announces its quarterly earnings tomorrow (Wednesday) after the market close, which will include iPhone sales figures for the last two days of the company’s third quarter. That should clarify things (I hope).