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Munster: Apple will sell more than 36 million iPhones worldwide in 2010

The wizard of tech on Wall Street, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, is bullish on AAPL.

Not only does the senior research analyst (who looks nothing like our artistic portrait at right) project that the company will sell 36 million iPhones in 2010, but he believes that the number is conservative for international sales and doesn't take into account any expansion to other U.S. cell carriers -- Verizon, for instance. Munster's prognostications were published in a note to investors this morning, where he noted that this will be the first full year of sales with new carriers in the U.K., Canada, and France, and also the first full year of sales in China.

Munster also believes that a new iPhone model will arrive around the usual June - July time frame, and that will drive sales as well. While the estimates seem rather optimistic, Munster says that his models are actually quite conservative, particularly when international sales are taken into account. For example, the Piper Jaffray models show that AT&T alone will sell 15.8 million iPhones to their customer base of 82.5 million customers, while a composite figure for three Russian carriers shows 1.8 million iPhones being sold to a combined base of 160 million subscribers.

Looking ahead for calendar year 2011, Munster sees a worldwide total sales figure of 48.5 million iPhones, once again based on a model that he considers conservative.

[via AppleInsider]