I am a German living in Sydney. Australia is the only country I know that sells all iPhone models outright. You can just walk into the beautiful Apple store and pick on up. As you can imagine, they are selling 1-3 each minute, mainly to asians and europeans. Australians have 3 carriers to choose from where they can get the iPhone for free.
No wonder you see the iPhone everywhere you. I think it is test market for world, or at least everywhere besides the US, where this currently would only be one more 3G/UMTS carrier in T-Mobile.