Apple’s launch of the iPhone 3G this weekend started well but quickly developed problems because of the onslaught of simultaneous server connections.

Although most Apple Store locations had plenty of stock and good connections to activation servers Friday morning, there were widespread reports of inventory depletion and broken or slow connections by the evening.

Reports emerged throughout the weekend of customers nationwide being turned away from stores because of no stock.  Other customers were left with so-called “bricked” devices that could not connect to any networks, whether 2G or 3G.

Some customers this weekend experienced similar problems with first-generation iPhones when trying to download the new Apple firmware.  The problem may seem familiar to the early iPhone customers, who had similar experiences a year ago.

Apple issued a press release today boasting of customers downloading more than 10 million applications from the new App Store since its launch late last week.  But there was no mention of the inventory and connection problems.

Synchronoss Technologies provided the activation of first-generation iPhones via Apple’s iTunes software.  However, for the iPhone 3G, “Synchronoss is not involved in the in-store activation process,” nor in the process of upgrading older iPhones to the new firmware, spokeswoman Stacie Hiras said.  No additional information is available at this time regarding which parts of the iPhone software updating process Synchronoss still provides to Apple, she said.

Apple officials on the West Coast were unavailable for comment this morning.