Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson today launched coverage of Coinstar (CSTR) with an Overweight rating and $38 price target. The parent of the Redbox video kiosk chain closed yesterday at $31.96.

Olson sees several trends working in the company’s favor:

• DVD rental kiosk market is gaining share from traditional retailers like Blockbuster.
• Internet delivery likely still 3-5 years from going mainstream.
• Consumers shifting to DVD rentals from purchases due to low fees from Redbox – $1-a-day.

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After Google (GOOG) unveiled new features to its search results yesterday, one analyst is saying that the company’s leadership position has become virtually unshakable.

In a research report, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said that while the new products–Google Search Options, Google Squared and Rich Snippets–were “more evolutionary than revolutionary,” they demonstrated the company’s continued ability to innovate. “The bottom line is that we expect Google’s continued product improvement to allow the company to maintain its leadership position in search for the foreseeable future,” he wrote.

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China today is reportedly shutting down about 10,000 unregistered and unapproved Web sites, most of them operated by small businesses, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. He says that “multiple Chinese media sources” last night discussed the push to clean up unwanted Internet sites.

Munster says the move could have a small negative impact on Baidu (BIDU), the China-based Internet search service. He notes that at the end of 2008, the company had 197,000 customers. He figures that about half of the Web sites that the government is shutting down were likely buying keywords from Baidu, or about 2.5 percent of its customers.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel this morning cut his rating on Evergreen Solar (ESLR) to Neutral from Buy, chopping his target price in half to $2.50, from $5. The move follows the company’s release after the close yesterday of disappointing Q4 results.

Pichel offered three reasons for his more cautious approach to the stock:

• He contends the company is “rapidly losing its polysilicon cost advantage” as the price of polysilicon approaches $100/kg and as “competition intensifies in an over-supplied environment.”
• Pichel says he has “little visibility” into the company’s new strategy to outsource production in Asia.
• The company’s balance sheet “leaves little flexibility for pursuing alternative expansion strategies in Asia.”

He says the stock at $2 “represents an option on solar’s growth in the U.S.,” but that “future growth and profitability prospects have become murkier in the last two months in an intensely competitive environment.”

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While I noted earlier his reduced estimates for both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster today actually cut estimates on 33 Internet and online content companies, citing “the significant deterioration in the economic and consumer spending outlook.”

Munster says he expects the U.S. savings rate to increase significantly over the next few years, following 25 years of increasing leverage and a declining savings rate. The good news is that will allow households to rebuild savings, home equity and investment portfolios. The bad news is that it means less consumer spending.

“Nearly all drivers of consumer spending, including employment, employee earnings, consumer credit, household wealth and consumers’ propensity to save, are all moving in a direction to drive spending lower over the near-term,” he writes in a note.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Mitchell Kaiser this morning cut his rating on Best Buy (BBY) shares to Neutral from Buy, and chopped his price target on the stock to $49 from $54. “We are concerned about gross margin erosion in the home theater department as a result of what we expect will be significant flat panel TV price declines in the coming months,” Kaiser writes.

Kaiser says he is not making a negative call on Q2; in fact, he increased his estimate for the quarter to 59 cents, from 57 cents. But he writes that “channel checks … have revealed weak consumer demand for large flat panel TVs during the summer months and the early weeks of the important fall selling season.” He adds that the weak demand has created excess inventory “throughout the supply chain” that will likely have “negative gross margin implications” for the next two quarters. He trimmed his FY ‘09 EPS estimate to $3.30 from $3.37.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes this morning that Apple’s (AAPL) expansion today of the iPhone’s availability to 21 additional countries, nearly doubling the total, will lead to a 78 percent increase in addressable buyers, and that the resultant rise in iPhone unit sales is not being taken account of in Street estimates for Apple.

“Our iPhone estimate of 4.1 million units in the Sept. [fiscal third] quarter is likely conservative,” writes Munster. (Munster actually raised his estimate for this quarter to 4.47 million units last week. Not sure why he uses the old estimate in today’s note.)

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Such is the frenzy for information about potential new products from Apple (AAPL) that the blogosphere has begun to lose track of the rumors.

On Macrumors.com, a post this morning makes reference to a report purportedly put out today by Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson. The report, which supposedly details expectations of upgrades to Apple’s laptops and iPods that may materialize in September, sounds suspiciously like a report put out on Aug. 6 by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

In fact, they are the same report! There were no new reports from either Munster or Olson today, as a quick phone call to Piper Jaffray’s media relations department revealed. Olson and Munster work together, sharing coverage of Apple, and the one report they filed on Aug. 6 is being confused as two separate reports a week apart.

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Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, perhaps the most bullish analyst on the Street on Apple (AAPL) shares–he maintains a Buy rating and $250 price target–wrote a detailed analysis today on what the true cost of the iPhone 3G will be for U.S. consumers. In short, while the retail price, at $199, is half the old price, other costs will make this version more expensive than the old over the life of the required two-year contract. And secondly, he estimates that the actual costs of the hardware will be a lot higher than the stated $199 price tag.

One issue, as Munster notes, is that the data plan for the first generation iPhone phone was $20 a month, including unlimited data and 200 text messages a month, on top of a voice plan. For the new phone, the data plan is $30 a month, and it will run you another $5 a month for 200 text messages. On that basis, the data-related fees over the course of two years will actually be $360 higher than before, or considerably more than the $200 cut in the hardware price.

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Apple (AAPL) shares are getting hit hard in today’s broad market selloff. While there are some minor news developments involving Apple–a lawsuit over the use of the phrase “Mighty Mouse,” a report that the company will use LED backlit displays in future laptops–there’s nothing obvious that would be pressuring the stock.

One item worth noting which I missed yesterday: Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster in an unusually cautious (for him) research note on Tuesday advised investors to keep their expectations for the capabilities of the 3G iPhone “in check.” He said the phone is likely to be nearly identical to the current iPhone in form and function.

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