PROVIDENCE – Rhode Islanders are displaying a voracious appetite for the new iPhone 3G, and the Apple Store in the Providence Place mall is struggling to meet the demand.

The store had sold out of iPhones for a second time by noon on Monday, an employee told PBN. The outlet, the only one in Rhode Island, received a limited quanity of select styles and colors of the new iPhone on Tuesday, but an employee said that the supply was unlikely to last. Yesterday – the 11th day the phone has been on the market – customers lined up outside the first-floor shop hoping to get their hands on Apple’s newest product.

Only three of Apple’s 188 shops had the new phones available this Monday, according to a tally by Bloomberg News. Demand has been so strong that Apple has added to its Web site a specific page, updated nightly at 9 p.m., that tracks iPhone availability at its outlets nationwide.

“Apple and its partners can only make them so fast,” Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., told Bloomberg. But, he added, “The current shortage is only negative if Apple isn’t able to increase production in the coming weeks.”

Area customers snapped up Apple’s entire local supply of the new phone during the weekend of July 11, its first weekend on sale. The phone is priced between $199 and $299 and carries cellular service from AT&T.

The Providence Apple Store was one 95 outlets nationwide that had run out of iPhones by July 13, two days after the iPhone was released, according to an online inventory posted on Apple’s Web site. The company sold 1 million iPhones worldwide over the three-day span.

So many customers were still showing up at the Providence store on the phone’s second day of release – Saturday, July 12 – that would-be iPhone buyers had to wait in line outside the store to purchase the device.

Additional information about the new iPhone 3G is available from manufacturer Apple Inc. at www.apple.com.