Every week, another telecommunications company worldwide makes a brief announcement about carrying the iPhone, then observers accumulate the potential worldwide audience in awe. On Tuesday, Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves said that the numbers are now out of hand and should be put in perspective.

Deals with Apple now reach a potential audience of 669 million subscribers, and increase of 520 million in the last month. However, Mr. Hargreaves has advised investors to slow down. While it’s true that worldwide sales of mobile phones are expected to reach 1.27 billion this year, he reminded investors that not everyone wants a smartphone.

As such, most of those astronomical numbers can’t be used as potential iPhone buyers. His estimate for smartphone purchases in 61 million units in 2008 and 81.3 million in 2009. With an estimate of Apple’s market share of the smartphones only at 17.2 percent in 2008 and 18.8 percent in 2009, that puts iPhone sales at 10.5 million in 2008 and 15.3 million in 2009.

Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray has put the number considerably higher for 2009, 45 million.

Mr. Hargreaves added that demand could be driven higher by compelling enterprise applications for the iPhone. Subsidies could also boost demand as well as new deals in China, Russia and Japan

Recently, Apple struck a deal with Hutchison Telecom to sell the iPhone in Hong Kong and Macau, but that represents only a small fraction of China’s population.