On the 19th of this month, the next, third generation iPhone was released to the world. Unlike it’s two predecessors, the iPhone 3GS was not a major update in terms of its feature set or design. In fact, most of its new features became accessible from previous iPhones through a free software update, and the design of the 3G and 3GS are perfectly identical. Even for such a minor update, Apple’s almost-perfect marketing put out better sales numbers with the third-generation 3GS than it had with the 3G!

A recently leaked, internal AT&T memo tells just about all the information needed to come to the conclusion that AT&T is at Apple’s command.

1. Fact of the Week: On June 25, the day Michael Jackson died, text messages sent on our network spiked at 65,000 messages per second — the largest volume ever recorded — surpassing events like American Idol voting and New Year’s Eve, when millions of our customers wish their friends and family a happy new year via text.

2. iLaunch day 2009 was one for the record books, as AT&T customers scrambled to get their hands on the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.

Here’s a look at some of the milestones we achieved:

• Best-ever sales day in our retail stores
• Second-largest traffic day in our retail stores
• Most transactions processed via our IT systems in a single day
• Most upgrade eligibility checks in a single day
• Largest order day in att.com history
• Largest features sales day in att.com history

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

It’s quite unlikely that AT&T will ever find another handset manufacturer with the resources and marketing intelligence to drive so many sales and new customers. More than 40% of the 1.6 million new AT&T/iPhone subscribers of the last quarter were new to the network.

Whether it be $200+ subsidies per iPhone sold or forced, rapid expansion of their lacking 3G network, AT&T will do what it takes to keep it most valuable partner satisfied and locked in.