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CDMA iPhone shipments could top 12 million in '11

With the Verizon iPhone still a couple of weeks from reaching market, estimates of the number of devices that will ship in 2011 are apparently on the rise.

Jim Dalrymple Special to CNET News
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop.
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Apple's CDMA-compatible iPhone isn't on the market yet, but estimates for the number of units shipping in 2011 are apparently on the rise.

Kent German/CNET

Pegatron, the Taiwan-based company that is manufacturing the CDMA iPhone for Apple to sell through Verizon, is expecting to ship 12 million to 15 million units in 2011, component makers told DigiTimes. That's up from previous internal estimates of 10 million CDMA iPhones for 2011, the Taiwan-based tech news site reported Tuesday.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster recently pegged the number of iPhones Verizon would sell the first year at 9 million, which is below Pegatron's first estimate.

Apple's Verizon iPhone has been one of the most rumored devices since Apple first brought the iPhone to AT&T four years ago. Verizon announced last week that it will launch its iPhone on February 10.

There are very few differences between the upcoming CDMA iPhone and GSM iPhone models currently being sold around the world. Perhaps the biggest difference is the fact that the mute switch had to be moved to accommodate the CDMA antenna.

Existing Verizon customers can preorder the iPhone 4, starting February 3.