Apple’s WiFi iPad was released on Friday, April 3rd and the iPad on April 30th. In between these 28 odd days Apple was able to effectively sell more than one million iPads. Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray predicted that since the nationwide release, over the weekend, approximately 300,000 iPad 3 G units had been sold.
Munster mentioned, “Near-term, this may put downward pressure on launch day/weekend statistics, but long-term we see it as a positive, as consumers are definitely interested in the iPad as a new category.” He also added, “In the first several quarters, we believe Apple will sell about 60% Wi-Fi only iPads and 40% 3G models.” He further predicts that the sales figure for iPad in 2010 could well be around 4.3 million units.
When the 50 Apple stores were got in touch with to confirm the estimate of 300,000, it was discovered that 49 of them exhausted their stocks of iPad 3G. This tremendous success of the Apple iPad 3G goes to show that the management team at Cupertino were caught unprepared by this overwhelming response to the device. Such a success was least expected by them.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs did away all the speculations about the genuineness of this report when he issued a public statement saying, “One million iPads in 28 days — that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone. Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”
It was mentioned in their press release that more than 5,000 exciting new apps have been created by their Developers for the iPad. These new apps can make use of the Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high quality graphics. Already more than 12 million apps have been downloaded by the users from the App Store in addition to over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.