OppenheimerFunds has launched its coverage of Apple with analyst Yair Reiner setting an Outperform rating for AAPL and a target price of US$235. He's projecting that Apple will sell 28 million iPhones in 2009.

“We believe Apple is ideally positioned to drive and benefit from the ongoing transformation of the home PC form [sic] efficiency tool to media center, and of the wireless handset from mobile phone to media-centric pocket computer,” Mr. Reiner wrote in his first report on Apple.

Mr. Reiner believes that demand for the iPhone 3G will be stronger than the Street is modeling. For example, on Monday Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told his investors to keep their expectations "in check." In contrast, Mr. Reiner wrote that Apple will boost its phone market share to 5 percent by 2012. When the iPhone was launched, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs set expectations at 1 percent of annual mobile phones sales of about one billion units, or 10 million iPhones.

The analyst's projections are for 14M iPhones in 2008 and 28 million iPhones in 2009. He sees the growth driven by additional models, specially those aimed at the enterprise.

In March, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney reported that his sources were saying that Apple had placed an initial order for 10M new iPhones, likely 3G models, over and above the current models. At the time, the report was deemed as overly optimistic. However, Mr. Reiner's projections suggest that the 10M iPhones to be delivered to Apple in June may be just the first of many such orders.