My father mentioned the price of Apple stock in a Skype call we had this morning, but at the time I thought he just meant the general upwards trend lately. However, when I checked the day’s results, Apple stock was up $3.66, or 2.73%. It’s nice to open up your account and see that you made a thousand bucks overnight. I am guessing that the jump was the result of this report from USA Today:

Early iPhone owners are overwhelmingly happy with their devices, a survey out Friday says, and Apple and AT&T are luring customers from rivals as a result.

In one of the first such studies, 90% of 200 owners said they were “extremely” or “very” satisfied with their phone. And 85% said they are “extremely” or “very” likely to recommend the device to others, says the online survey conducted and paid for by market researcher Interpret of Santa Monica, Calif. The firm surveyed 1,000 cellphone users July 6-10.

The findings are “pretty much off the charts,” says Jason Kramer, Interpret’s chief strategy officer. …

Apple still faces challenges. The high cost of the two iPhone models — $499 and $599 — ranks as the No. 1 reason consumers interested in the device did not buy one, the survey says. Those consumers said they would pay an average of, at most, $180.

Owners said there’s room for improvement. At the top of their wish list: longer battery life, faster Internet speed and more internal memory. Other factors, including the lack of a physical keyboard, were well down on their lists.

The iPhone is extending Apple’s reach, the survey says. Three of 10 buyers were first-time Apple customers. For 40%, iPhone is their first iPod.

This bodes extremely well for the iPhone and for Apple. Word of mouth is very important, and a lot of people may have been holding back, waiting for the reactions of the early buyers. It suggests that perceived problems are not nearly as bad as people expected–especially the keyboard–and Apple’s objectives of selling ten million units by the end of 2008 may be exceeded, even as a domestic figure.

The halo effect is also an issue, as more people will get a dose of Apple’s design style. Just yesterday at work, a staff member said that he’s probably going to buy a Mac soon, and that is based upon the iPod he bought recently; he loves it so much, he figures Macs should also be a welcome change from PCs. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he may have bought his iPod just a tad too soon, with full-screen multi-touch models being a likely upcoming release. Still, that kind of story, though anecdotal, is telling. If someone really likes a product from a company, they may well buy more, different products from the same company. And early iPhone news seems to indicate that Apple sales may increase even more than they have in the recent past–and they have already been increasing computer sales faster than anyone else out there.

There could even be a bit of a boost from what Fake Steve Jobs might call the “skank” factor–already Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have been photographed carrying iPhones (almost a bit too conspicuously, if you ask me). While FSJ rants about how there was supposed to be a policy to keep such people from buying an iPhone, it probably won’t hurt sales among the younger crowds.