Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster summarized the flood of recent iPhone deals in a note to clients Friday. The key numbers:

• 46 carriers announced to date (up from 6 currently)
• 42 countries covered (up from 6)
• 575 million total available market (up from 153 million)

Munster had expected Apple to announce a flurry of deals with overseas carriers in 2008, but not this fast. “The iPhone’s international rollout,” he writes, “is about 8 months ahead of our original schedule.”

Assuming that the device maintains its current 3% market penetration, the recent announcements give Munster “increased confidence” that Apple will meet his published sales target of 12.9 million iPhones in calendar year 2008.

Well they should, since 3% of 575 million is 17.25 million iPhones.

For 2009, Munster is sticking with his estimate of 45 million iPhones — a target that represents the high end among mainstream Apple analysts. Apple achieves this, he says, by 1) opening up China and Japan, for a total available market of 1.1 billion, 2) introducing a lower-cost iPhone in January ‘09, and 3) increasing its market penetration to 6%.

As for the current round of deals, Munster believes that most of them are non-exclusive, a change that he expects will have a positive impact on iPhone sales, a slight negative impact on iPhone revenue, but “no material” impact on Apple’s (AAPL) published earnings.

Napoleon would be proud.

France Telecom’s wireless subsidiary Orange laid out expansion plans on Friday that will extend its iPhone market beyond France’s borders and into Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. The news came a one-sentence press release:

“Orange today announced a new agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Orange customers in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange’s African markets later this year.” (link)

Orange’s African markets include — in addition to Egypt — the Ivory Coast, Jordan, Cameroon, Botswana, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal, Mauritius, and Réunion.

In the Caribbean, Orange services — in addition to the Dominican Republic — Martinique, French Guiana, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, but those islands were not mentioned in the release.

Also missing from the announcement was any word about Spain, the largest European country still without an iPhone carrier.

Some or all of these deals are nonexclusive. Swisscom has already announced plans to offer the iPhone in Switzerland, Vodafone will carrying it in Portugal and Egypt and America Movil has already called the Dominican Republic.

[UPDATE: According to AppleInsider, a spokesperson for France Telecom says that the carrier will be the exclusive iPhone provider in Belgium and Romania, with co-exclusive or non-exclusive deals in other countries.]

All told, France Telecom (FTE) has more than 172 million customers in five continents, two thirds of whom are Orange customers.

The real empire builder in all this, of course, is Apple’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs, who has timed each news release over the past few weeks so that his cards are laid on the table one deal at a time. It’s all part of the build-up to his June 9 keynote and the expected unveiling of a second-generation, 3G iPhone.

As Winston Churchill might have put it, an Apple rumor can fly halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its boots on.

Case in point: the iPhone mini-tablet story that broke Wednesday afternoon in Germany.

It started with a bad computer an English translation of a sloppy dispatch in the German language version of ZDnet. Under the headline “iPhone kommt mit größerem Display und Intel Atom,” ZDNet.de reported on a speech given by Intel Germany CEO Hannes Schwaderer in Munich. The key passage, as machine-translated, edited and re-broadcast by MacRumors:

As part of an Intel event for the 40th birthday of the semiconductor company at Munich’s BMW World, Germany managing director Hannes Schwaderer confirmed today what has long been a rumor on the Internet: namely, that there is an iPhone with Intel’s new Atom chip. The device is slightly larger than the current version, Schwaderer said. That is not, however, because of the Intel chip, but because of the larger display used in the new iPhone. (link)

MacRumors’ Arnold Kim helpfully added that this correlated with “circulating rumors” that Apple was working on a mini-tablet (720×480) device.

That’s all it took. By Thursday morning, there were 15 headlines on Techmeme echoing and amplifying the ZDNet report, among them:

• Valleywag: “Intel Atom to be used in new, larger iPhone”
• Gizmodo: “Intel Germany CEO Spills on Atom-Based Mini-Tablet iPhone”
• Engadget: “WWDC to launch a 3G iPhone and Atom-based MID device?”

AppleInsider ran a Photoshop rendition of a Newton-size iPhone and reminded readers that the device Intel Germany’s CEO now “vouches” for was first reported by AppleInsider last September. (link) Seth Weintraub in Computerworld went so far in his tablet-iPhone speculation as to post a bar graph of benchmark tests comparing the Atom to predecessor chips. (link)

The only trouble with all of this is that it’s not true, as Intel (INTC) PR took pains to point out in ZDNet’s next-day quasi-retraction.

Intel specifically “disclaimed” the report that started it all. Intel Germany’s CEO was only making general remarks about the kind of mobile devices the Atom might power in the future and did not mean to speculate about future Apple (AAPL) products. He mentioned the iPhone in this connection, according to Intel, only as an example of a small Internet device.

“Intel knows nothing over future products of other manufacturers and can therefore over it also nothing say,” press spokesman Mike Cato told ZDNet in a quote that probably sounded better in German than it does in Babel Fish translation. (link)

[UPDATE: MacRumors' Kim stands by his German-to-English translation (duly noted, and corrected above) and notes that ZDNet now points to second account of Schwaderer's speech from PCGamesHardware.de:

"PCGH-Editor Daniel Waadt was there as well an can attest, that Schwaderer referred to the iPhone as an example for the use of the atom-processor from Intel. The Intel CEO mentioned furthermore, that the display on iPhone 2 would be bigger than on iPhone 1 (although it is already quite big). iPhone 2 is also thinner than iPhone 1." (via MacRumors, translated "by Leo from Fscklog")

We leave it to the reader to determine if this confirms the existence of the mini-tablet iPhone.]

How fast will the new iPhone run on AT&T’s 3G network?

Plenty fast, according to promises made by AT&T (T) mobility chief Ralph de la Vega at Morgan Stanley’s annual Communications Conference on Wednesday.

De la Vega said that a version of the network was already running in AT&T labs at 7.2 megabits per second, which according to AppleInsider’s Katie Marsal is double the theoretical throughput of the company’s HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) network. (link)

It also happens to match the specs of the Infineon (IFX) SGOLD3 chip Apple has reportedly chosen to serve as the new iPhone’s cellular modem. See here.

Throughput of 7.2 Mbps would put the 3G iPhone within spitting distance of Wi-Fi speeds, which typically run between 6.5 Mbps and 20 Mbps.

But de la Vega didn’t stop there. According to Marsal, he told the Morgan Stanley audience that sometime in 2009 the company will transition to HSPA release 7, which could deliver speeds “exceeding 20 megabits per second.” (link)

Of course, we won’t know how fast Apple’s (AAPL) 3G iPhone really is until someone gets their hands on one and runs some good benchmark tests in the wild. AT&T EDGE network, after all, is rated at up to 236.8 kbps, but when put to the test, actual throughput turned out to be in the 50 to 90 kbps range (see here).

In February, AT&T said it expected to deliver 3G services to some 350 leading U.S. markets before the end of 2008, including all of the top 100 U.S. cities (link). Owners of 3G iPhone in the other U.S. markets will have to make do with EDGE — or whatever stray Wi-Fi signals they manage to pick up.

Less than a week after press reports that a deal had been reached, Swisscom on Wednesday confirmed that it will be bringing Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone to Switzerland this summer.

For a country known for its discretion, Switzerland has been a hotbed of iPhone rumors lately. The one getting the most buzz was posted Tuesday on MacPrime’s Swisscom iPhone forum by a reader named dakis. Dakis provides price points, a June 20 delivery date and three colors: silver, black and white — none of which sounds quite right.

Swisscom (SWJ.F) is Switzerland’s largest mobile phone carrier, with 5.1 million mobile subscribers, and one of its biggest IT providers. Wednesday’s announcement follows a string of deals that more than triples the iPhone’s available market, according to American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu, from 150 million in the U.S. and Europe today to roughly 470 million worldwide this summer.

[Thanks to 9to5Mac for the tip.]

They’re there: Carrie Bradshaw. Tony Soprano. Jimmy McNulty. Jemaine Clement. Seth Bullock. Julius Caesar.

Early Tuesday morning, somebody at Apple’s iTunes Store flicked a switch and six of HBO’s most popular series became available for download for prices ranging from $1.99 to $2.99 per episode. They are:

• Sex and the City: $1.99 per episode
• The Wire: $1.99
• Deadwood: $2.99
• Flight of the Conchords: $1.99
• Rome: $2.99
• The Sopranos: $2.99

As widely reported on Monday, the deal is a breakthrough for both Apple (AAPL) and Time Warner’s (TWX) HBO.

For HBO, which is making individual episodes available for the first time, it’s a chance to expand viewership beyond its 30 million cable TV subscribers to Apple’s broader audience of 50 million registered iTunes users.

For Apple, it’s a strong signal that Steve Jobs has backed away from his stubborn insistence on flat-rate pricing — $1.99 for TV episodes, $.99 for songs — and is ready start a new round of deal making in Hollywood.

On May 1, Apple announced an agreement with Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox (NWS), Walt Disney (DIS), Paramount (VIA), Sony (SNE) and others to make movies available for iTunes download the same day they are released on DVD at two price points: $14.99 for new releases and $9.99 for older films. (see Apple’s new Hollywood deal)

Could a rapprochement with NBC — which pulled its series off iTunes last December in a dispute over flat rate pricing (see here) — be far behind? The fact that NBC (GE) started streaming free episodes of two of its most popular shows, The Office and 30 Rock, to iPhones last week seems like a promising sign.

[UPDATE: Apple posted a press release this morning. HBO is "excited." Apple is "thrilled."]

The week opens with fresh reports of iPhone agreements with overseas carriers, as Apple (AAPL) continues its push to roll the Web-browsing cellphone out beyond the United States and Europe.

The Wall St. Journal, BBC and other sources reported on Monday that Apple and SingTel have signed deals to bring the iPhone to four countries in the Asia-Pacific region. SingTel, with 124 million mobile subscribers, is said to be the largest Asian provider outside the People’s Republic of China. The deals involve SingTel and three of its subsidiaries:

• SingTel will bring the iPhone to its 2.3 million subscribers in Singapore
• Bharti Airtel will offer it to its 64 million customers in India
• Globe Telecom will offer it to 21 million subscribers in the Philippines
• Optus will offer it to its 7 million customers in Australia.

Australia and India were among the countries that Vodaphone (VOD) said last week that it was covering (see here) — further evidence that Apple is signing contracts that don’t offer exclusivity.

Below: an update of CdnPhoto’s map of the iPhone world, redrawn to include the latest developments.

[UPDATE: Apple made it official on Tuesday with this press release. Jobs' keynote is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT.]

Although no official announcement has been made, Apple public relations confirmed to Fortune that Steve Jobs will deliver a keynote address on June 9, the first day of the 2008 World Wide Developers conference.

It is widely expected that Jobs will use that speech to unveil the next generation of iPhones, including a so-called 3G model.

“The launch of the new model is imminent,” wrote Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in a report to clients Monday.

Munster notes that beginning Saturday, May 10, first generation iPhones were unavailable through Apple’s online store in the United States, the most recent sign that the company is clearing inventory in advance of a new release. (Two days earlier, O2 ran out of iPhones in the United Kingdom.) On Sunday Munster called 11 Apple retail stores to check on their supply; five were completely out of stock and one of the remaining six had fewer that five phones on hand.

Munster also alerted his clients to the discovery, first reported over the weekend by MacRumors, of a switch in the latest release of the iPhone 2.0 firmware that will allow users to toggle 3G data ON for faster download speeds or OFF to conserve battery life.

Despite dwindling supplies, Munster still estimates that Apple will ship 1.7 million iPhones in the quarter that ends June 30. That’s because he expects Apple to start shipping the new model in large numbers before the end of the month.

Other signs — including the release of the new Software Developers Kit scheduled for late June and an AT&T Mobile (T) memo canceling staff vacations between June 15 and July 12 (see here) — point to Friday, June 27, as the day the new model will go on sale. That would give Apple four days of 3G iPhone sales before the quarter closes.

“Net-net,” writes Munster, “the initial surge of iPhone sales in June would likely offset the lost sales due to limited availability in May.”

The drumroll has already started on Apple’s (AAPL) website, where users can download a Dashboard widget counting down the hours before the June 9 WWDC by the days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Here’s one thing the folks at Apple could teach their friends at AT&T: how to parcel out the good news.

Case in point: the Starbucks-iPhone-Wi-Fi deal that’s been on and off all week and generating all the wrong kind of headlines (see for example, here).

If Steve Jobs were running AT&T, he would have kept it simple. And a surprise. The first we would have heard about it would be when he announced it, with a flourish, as a fait accompli. Starting today, free unlimited Wi-Fi for every iPhone owner at all 7,000 Starbucks coffee shops and every other AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot — 17,000 in the U.S., 70,000 around the world.

Boom.

What we got instead was the public relations equivalent of second-day coffee, starting with the press release AT&T (T) issued back in February. The 13-paragraph document talks about free Wi-Fi for “AT&T broadband, AT&T U-verse^SM Internet [and] AT&T’s remote access services business customers” but never mentions Apple (AAPL) or the iPhone — two hot-button words that would have given the news some real buzz.

Instead reporters focused on the fact that Starbucks (SBUX) was pulling the plug on T-Mobile, which had been providing it with wireless service since 2001.

Then, last week, without warning, AT&T turned the service on. I spotted it on April 30 when I tried to log on to my T-Mobile account and discovered an AT&T link that wasn’t there the day before. I was already thinking about how many extra shots of espresso I could buy with the $39 a month I would save.

And I was not alone. Apple rumor sites that day were flooded with tips from both coasts alerting them that iPhone owners were getting free Wi-Fi at Starbucks by just by typing in their 10-digit AT&T phone number. AT&T had apparently launched a nationwide test without telling anyone.

Then, four days later, the service stopped, as abruptly and mysteriously as it started, setting off waves of confusion and speculation about what the company’s on-again, off-again behavior might mean. (see here)

You might think that AT&T would have learned their lesson. But no. On Thursday, the text on its website was changed to add language about the new service — “access to AT&T’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks* all for use (sic) in the U.S.” — that iPhone owners took as a signal that the game was on for good.

Then the language disappeared, along with the Wi-Fi service, triggering another round of second-guessing. (see here)

Apparently the habit of firing before aiming — not to mention clearing it with publicity — had spread from AT&T’s networking guys to its marketing staff.

Officially, both AT&T and Apple have no comment, but the folks in Cupertino are clearly miffed. They saw the Starbucks deal as big news for iPhone owners, and they had hoped to work with AT&T to package it for high-profile release, probably in a matter of weeks.

They would have done it right.

[UPDATE: Below the fold, CdnPhoto's latest version of the map, with Spain and Poland removed because they are still at the rumor stage.]

Like many Apple (AAPL) watchers, the investors at IMO’s Apple Finance Forum have been closely following this week’s flurry of announcements of iPhone deals with carriers around the world. One of the contributors to the forum — a regular from Toronto who posts as CdnPhoto — has summarized the information graphically in a color-coded map of the world. With his permission, I’ve pasted it below.

Countries where the iPhone is now available, or will be this summer, are marked in red:

[E-mail subscribers: click here to see the map.]

Switzerland, Spain and Poland probably should be tinted a light shade of pink; these were rumors, not official announcements (see here).

Of course, if unlocked blackmarket iPhones were included, most of the world would be colored Apple red. See The iPhones of Equatorial Guinea.

For those who prefer their information in list form, here are the countries added in the past couple weeks:

For Vodaphone (VOD) (link):
Australia
Czech Republic
Egypt
Greece
India
Italy (also Telecom Italia)
New Zealand
Portugal
South Africa
Turkey

For America Movil (AMX) (link):
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Paraguay
Peru
Puerto Rico
Uruguay

For Rogers Wireless:
Canada

Rumors (link):
Switzerland
Spain
Poland

No word yet:
China
Korea
Japan
Russia

For updates, check APPLinvestors, which keeps a running tally here.

Updated version of the map below the fold: