­South Korea’s SK Telecom has started taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4 last week, and was publishing a counter of how many it was selling, until the tally was suddenly removed from its website.

It is reported that the company was ordered to stop publishing sales figures by Apple. The company had taken 28,000 orders in the first seven hours of sales on the 9th March before the sales figures were taken down. The company stated that it was required to consult with the maker before publicizing the number of preliminary orders.

As per sources, Apple is overly sensitive in announcing the updates of orders, insinuating that Apple had asked for the sales figures to be removed.

Part of the reason could be that initial sales figures may have actually been weaker than expected. It was hoped that sales would match the fever when the iPhone 4 was originally offered by rival operator, Korea Telecom, but fell far short of the 100,000 sales that were expected.

As per sources, it is evident that Apple took action because the performance of SK Telecom wasn’t satisfactory.