Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster told investors on Tuesday that he recently spoke to a major TV component supplier to learn more about Apple’s rumored plans to release a connected HDTV. The supplier confirmed with Munster that Apple did contact them “regarding various capabilities of their television display components.”

Analyst Gene Munster has found in Piper Jaffray data that iPhone users are much more loyal to their phone brand than Android and Blackberry users. InformationWeek reports that he estimates about 94% loyalty from iPhone owners when they go to buy their next phone, compared to about 47% loyalty in Android owners and 26% loyalty in BlackBerry owners. Of those surveyed, 42% of Android owners and 67% of BlackBerry owners plan on switching to iPhone with their next purchase.

Gene Munster is a technology analyst that works for Piper Jaffray. He is well known for doing research on Apple forecasts as well. In the above video, Munster did an interview with Bloomberg to discuss his thoughts on Google vs. Facebook. In the interview Munster bluntly stated that “Google has given up on social” and Facebook is the clear winner. He also said that Facebook is what Google was 5 years ago and Google is now a Microsoft because they are not innovating as fast as they have been in the past. [BusinessInsider]

Above is a chart generated by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster about what an application costs Apple to sell.  Apple currently claims that the App Store is at or near broke even.
Munster used two pieces of information to make these assumptions.  In Steve Jobs’ keynote two weeks ago, he said that 5 billion apps have been downloaded and $1 billion has been paid out to developers.  Below are some of Munster’s key points regarding those figures.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has sold out of 3G iPads. Analysts are predicting that about 2.5 million have been sold this quarter. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated that 74% of all Apple stores were sold out complete. About 26% of the stores had WiFi models on hand, but no 3Gs left. If you want an iPad, you can reserve one in the store and receive it 4-7 days later or order it online and get it 7-10 days later. [BI]

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has sold about 700,000 iPad devices on the first day. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak joined a pre-iPad vigil at 6PM Friday at Valley Fair mall in San Jose. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs greeted customers at the Apple store on University Avenue in Palo Alto.

Some customers that were able to get their hands on the $699 64GB device attempted to resell it on Craigslist for $1,000.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster initially expected that about 300,000 iPads would be sold during the weekend. The numbers were revised upwards to about 600,000-700,000 on the first day. [MercuryNews]

According to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, Asian suppliers have revised shipping forecasts for the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad. Now the suppliers expect to ship about 8-10 million iPads by the end of 2010.

When breaking the numbers down further, the suppliers expect to ship about 2.5 million units between the first three months of sales (March to May). Even though 8-10 million iPads will be shipped, Hubert believes that Apple will sell about 6 million of them.

Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster expects that Apple will actually sell about 2.8 million units in 2010, including 200,000 units in the opening weekend. We won’t know the real numbers until Apple makes an announcement about them later this year. [Mashable and BusinessWeek]

In the United States and several other countries, Apple has sold millions of iPhone devices. But in China there has not been a good number of sales whatsoever. China Unicom reportedly sold only about 5,000 iPhones in a week. Two of the biggest problems with selling the iPhone in China so far is that the price is too high and it does not come bundled with WiFi.

The iPhone costs $1,025 in China while it costs $299 in the United States with an AT&T contract. China Unicom is selling the iPhone for a price that is 26% higher than what it is selling for in Hong Kong.

“We believe that eventually China will emerge as a major market for iPhone sales, but it could take a year or two to gain meaningful unit traction as it did in the U.S.,” stated Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster.