Amid the antennagate kafuffle, an unrepentant Apple is supposed to start selling iPads in nine more countries on Friday, namely, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Holland, Mexico, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. The company said "many more countries" would follow.

The device is already sold in the major European markets, Canada and Japan.

Wall Street thinks it's sold 3.3 million of the things so far, which should tickle its third-quarter numbers due out Tuesday.

You have of course heard that a defensive Steve Jobs shrugged off any particular antenna design responsibility for iPhone 4's dodgy reception and dropped calls during his 90-minute crisis management press conference last Friday.

It's the press' fault for blowing a problem native to all smartphones in places with weak cell coverage way up out of all proportion, he said, ticking off the other smartphone makers and leading to a string of denials. (There are videos of other people's phones allegedly having reception problems on Apple's site.)

The press is out to tear Apple down, he claimed. He denied reports that he and Apple knew about the potential problem but went ahead with the mischief-making wraparound antenna design anyway.

Still, to alleviate the iPhone 4's so-called "death grip" caused by how the user holds the phone - but complained of only by a half of 1% of users, Jobs said - Apple is going to give away bumpers a k a cases for the thing until September 30 when it revisits the issue. Users can also get their money back.

The bumpers giveaway is estimated to cost Apple $180 million.

The crisis - or Apple's response to it - has sheared billions off of Apple's market cap.

Apple's stock continued to decline Friday and again Monday. It was close to $274 on June 22, two days before the iPhone 4 started shipping. Its stock closed at $245.58 on Monday July 19 and continued sinking after hours. Of course it's also been a rocky few weeks for the market in general. Analysts haven't dropped their iPhone 4 sales projections - at least not yet - but KT is going to delay the phone's introduction in Korea while it tests. Apple has sold three million iPhone 4s since it came out.