Analyst Estimates 600,000-700,000 iPads Sold on Launch Day

[autograf]

In Louisville here......

Went to Apple store here and there was a constant line from about 10:30am till 12:30am of 30-40 people. Also work for a LARGE transportation company here and I can assure you that 500K-700K transported is a good likely number.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Unlikely because I think it's too limited (albeit well-executed) a device to have a very broad appeal and anything nearing 700K in the first day would indicate a much broader appeal than I would ever have guessed. It really feels like another AppleTV to me--a niche thing that Apple can grow, make more appealing down the road.

Having said all that, I'll also say I'm always open to the possibility that I am wrong.

Even if you're right,I'm not surprised to see a huge burst on launch day,considering it's actually two weeks worth of sales.It could still drop off precipitously,but given the reviews and comments from people who have bought/used one at the store,I'm getting more confident it will be a huge hit.I'm reserving final judgment until my 64gb 3G arrives though!

 

[klrobinson999]

I was really impressed with the buying experience.

Two lines. One for those with pre-orders; one for local purchases.

Each customer was personally greeted by an employee.

Each customer was given explanation of iPad; no aimless searching.

Limited number of people in store at any one time; no pandemonium.

Every employee was a checkout counter; no paper, no cash, no bookkeeper in back -- all data flowed immediately to Steve Jobs' house.

No fuss, minimum time; most people knew how to use iPad and could make the transaction immediately. Unlike the iPhone with activation and activation glitches.

Finally, and I think this was a stroke of genius: selling only wi-fi version initially, and waiting to sell the 3G version later. On initial day, a) least expensive version available; b) only three choices first day -- all with regard to memory; c) people unfamiliar with difference between wi-fi and 3G -- eliminated all that time explaining to folks the difference (everyone on this board knows the difference, but my mother would not); d) the 3G was incredibly fast and Steve Jobs did not have to worry about ATT dropped calls on their network.

In all the reporting yesterday, unlike the iPhone launch, there was not one comment about any glitch or anyone unhappy with the buying experience.

By the way, at the Apple store no sales pitch to buy the "extended warranty." I see folks on this board who bought at Best Buy were being recommended to buy "extended warranty."

Same experience here, at the Columbus, OH store at Easton. Smooth transaction; greeted with a high five at the door; Apple employee personally assigned to me -- very helpful and not pushy. In and out of the door within 10 minutes or less, after waiting in line for 2 hours.

 

[Bigonapple]

The iPhone/iPod Touch does the same.

WOw I"ve had the iPhone for two years now and never n
Knew. I guess I can finally see the screen. Thanks for the info,

 

[Bigdaddyguido]

Statements that are pointless in this thread-

any comparison between the lines 1 hr after opening between the iPhone and the ipad. I was #14 in line at my small town AT&T and after 2 hours, I finally got up and just pre-ordered a phone the next batch. Those lines moved murderously slowly. The ipad is very, very different, takes mere seconds to get a store pickup, a few minutes to buy a new one.

Any statement about the ipad being a nitche product. Go read the reviews, flip through the threads of anyone who actually owns one. If listen to those who have the product, it is very clearly not in competition with their phone or there laptop. Walking around town, going to work or the gym, bring your iPhone, be conected, listen to tunes. Sitting around your house/lounging on vacation/going to a meeting? Stick a 1.5 lb ipad in your bag and be done with it (still got that iPhone...) doing hardcore content creation (most likely at home, or at the office, possibly out and about, laptop time.

With these facts in mind, these sales numbers are reasonable. Correct, who knows, wait and see. The point is, it sold great, the reviews are outstanding, and now apple already has 300,000-700,000 advertisements walking around in the wild allowing people to play with them in vivo, which will generate more hype than anything else.

 

[kallisti]

I find it hard to understand why people want an iPad without a GPS module in it. I was able to get into the first set of recipients from MacConnection by placing an order for my 64GB 3G model with them today on the phone. Although there is nothing on their website about iPads for sale, they've been taking phone orders since Friday morning. I'm among the first group of 64 units that they've been promised from Apple by the end of the month. No sales tax. Free shipping. I know that's what I'm saying. You must have misread my post. I am saying why would anyone buy the Wi-Fi only model? Makes no sense to me. I think people don't understand how powerful and useful the GPS part of an iPad will be. Or they just plain don't understand that there is no GPS in the Wi-Fi model. Or they haven't done their research and overlooked that fact which they will soon discover and regret buying the Wi-Fi only model.

Or...I don't plan on carrying an iPad around with me--that's what my iPhone is for. I pretty much just plan to use my iPad around the house, in the airport, on an airplane, possibly at work. I will never be walking around with it in a public place where I would care about map functions or GPS. My iPhone will always be with me and can handle those tasks.

So for me, a 3g/GPS iPad makes no sense. As an added bonus, I'm already playing with my iPad

 

[howyoudoin]

I work at bestbuy and we were only suppose to get 15 but got 25 so if all stores got more then they were expecting then 600,000 is a possibility. Apple stores always get huge amounts. Apple rather sell them at their own store (more profit that way) then best buy.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Nah....

The iPhone was way more anticipated and the iPad have been attacked way too much by the press paid by the frustrated competitors.

The iPad will have a better life as soon more applications exists.

I would be in line IF it had a webcam, but it does not so I will way the usual 2 years Apple take to release the actual quality product and not those senseless revitions.

Except for one thing.Every iPhone/iPod Touch user pretty much knows what they are getting and therefore don't need critics to tell them what to expect.That's a huge base of people with what amounts to first hand experience with a product they've never held.They didn't listen to the haters.

Yes apps will just make it better and more attractive,but again,there's no mystery about what's to come.

No webcam makes it not "quality"?Really?
But hat aside,why not get one enjoy it for a year or two,and eBay it when the camera comes out?

 

[INeedAMacBook]

ye but this is only the U.S. later this moth they are gonna get another massive bump selling the ipad to the rest of the world and selling the 3g models

 

[MattG]

NOT TO BE IGNORANT, but there are alot of stupid folks that don't know how great a device this is. To complain about a camera is stupid, the iPad is very good, and the applications are hot. I love it. Anyone stupid enough to hold up an ipad to take photos needs to get there head examined and real quick .

I agree, how dare anyone be critical and not buy one because it's not going to do what they want

Again, most of the people wanting a camera don't want it for the ability to take pictures like you would with an iPhone. A lot of people have a use for a front-facing camera, for videoconferencing etc.

It amazes me how many people in this forum really just don't get it. If the device works for you, fantastic. I'm sure it's a wonderful little gadget...but everyone is entitled to an opinion, and for a lot of people, this device is just a little too closed off and won't do what they were originally hoping for. Just because people have some criticisms doesn't make them "haters" or "stupid."

 

[E.Lizardo]

Too bad mine never show'd up. Thanks a lot UPS.

Just wait another day.Not that big of a deal.

Steve Jobs
Sent From My iPad

(seriously-I'm really sorry to hear that.I feel your pain.)

 

[mccldwll]

I would buy one, when it gets cheaper.
like how the 1st launch of the iPhone was $599, then dropped to $299 the next year, i think it will happen to the iPad. Agree?

You're wrong on the numbers and don't understand what happened. Price dropped $200 after several months and aapl issued a $100 store credit for earlier buyers. Price dropped to $199 when 3G released, but plan price increased by $15 (including texting) because 3G was subsidized. Because of the incredibly cheap T 3G no contract access, there won't be subsidies. So start saving up your allowances.

 

[Lesser Evets]

I loved the WSJ article about iPAD CROWDS SURGE, LINES THIN OUT LATER...

No, really?
You mean people didn't pack into the store continuously for 48 straight hours?
wtf.

 

[Jelite]

 

[mccldwll]

The online sales were NOT that high. Get your head out of the clouds, this is all BS.

You're the one who needs to pull his head out. Whatever the online number (which is 200K- 300K, including 3G), omitting it was a rookie/newbie/troll mistake.

 

[E.Lizardo]

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but if no one has said it yet, this is all ********, and Macrumors should pull this. Here's the math (from Gizmodo comment)

Here's why I called ******** (now that I have some time to explain).

So, there are around 200 Apple stores and 675 Best buys in the US that carried iPads. The grand total rests around 875-900 stores carrying the iPad on launch day.

Ok... in order for 875 stores to sell 700,000 iPads, they would've had to have sold 800 iPads EACH.

Now, it was reported that each of those 675 best buys would have 15 iPads each on launch day (5 of each wifi model). That means that all the iPads in all the Best Buys in the US on launch day added up to 10,125 units. That means that each Apple store would've had to push out ~3450 iPads in 8 hours.

EACH Apple store alone would've had to sell ~431 iPads per hour or ~7 iPads per minute.

The only way for 700,000 iPads to be sold in ONE DAY would've been if all 675 Best Buys and ~200 Apple stores (Wikipedia says there are 222 in the US) had ~780 iPads each and sold ~1.6 iPads per minute for 8 hours straight.

So... ********

Too bad you did all that math and left out the Apple online store,which is huge.

 

[Droid13]

Not so sure about this...

It is unclear from the report exactly what data Munster based his estimate upon beyond an observation of 730 customers in line at the company's flagship Fifth Avenue location in New York City, up from 350 for the iPhone 3GS launch and 540 for the iPhone 3G.

If this figure is really only based on the queue length, or even the number of sales in one store, this is a bad analysis - no way the sample size is large enough, there are too many assumptions being made, it is questionable whether queue length is a valid surrogate marker of sales and scaling up one store to stores across the US is just plain ridiculous.

I guess this has come about because of the pressure to be out there early with figures and so on. I'll wait for the official report, once the dust has settled.

 

[E.Lizardo]

The online sales were NOT that high. Get your head out of the clouds, this is all BS.

Where did you get YOUR data?Why the heck should we believe you?

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

I'd rather deal with the Apple store, Fedex is notorious for leaving crap ... mail theft is really bad in my building.

I still don't understand why Apple did open up reservations for the 3G version.

Had a customer at work yesterday that lamented that he might have missed his iPad because of signature required of the actual recipient... it could not be left with the front desk person at his building....

 

[Goona]

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but if no one has said it yet, this is all ********, and Macrumors should pull this. Here's the math (from Gizmodo comment)

Here's why I called ******** (now that I have some time to explain).

So, there are around 200 Apple stores and 675 Best buys in the US that carried iPads. The grand total rests around 875-900 stores carrying the iPad on launch day.

Ok... in order for 875 stores to sell 700,000 iPads, they would've had to have sold 800 iPads EACH.

Now, it was reported that each of those 675 best buys would have 15 iPads each on launch day (5 of each wifi model). That means that all the iPads in all the Best Buys in the US on launch day added up to 10,125 units. That means that each Apple store would've had to push out ~3450 iPads in 8 hours.

EACH Apple store alone would've had to sell ~431 iPads per hour or ~7 iPads per minute.

The only way for 700,000 iPads to be sold in ONE DAY would've been if all 675 Best Buys and ~200 Apple stores (Wikipedia says there are 222 in the US) had ~780 iPads each and sold ~1.6 iPads per minute for 8 hours straight.

So... ********

Dude these include like 2 weeks of preorders and the ones who reserved to pick up in store plus the ones who bought it yesterday.

Let's wait and see how the numbers are in a couple of months. I expect the sales to rapidly slow down after the initial hype. Why? Because actually nobody needs such a device - at least nobody at which the current marketing is targeted.

The iPad could be a nice device for electronic data capture, but here the AppStore concept will quickly be in its way to success. Enter Android.

Apple's "Disney-fied" content censorship will be another nail in the iPad's coffin. The biggest German publishers have already made their deals with the competition - the "WePad" sponsored by Deutsche Telekom. The WePad is yet another Android powered device with more powerful hardware than the iPad and with more capabilities.

But basically, all those devices have one thing in common: They are located in a market niche of which nobody knows whether it will ever become successful or lucrative. Of course 700,000 people with enough petty cash bought a new toy. But this market will only become interesting if something like 40,000,000 of those devices will be sold in the US alone. And I doubt that Apple or anybody else will get there.

Personally, I bet my money on the first mass market compatible generation of wearable computers. And interpreting some of Apple's job ads correctly, Apple is already researching and developing in that area as well.

People don't want to carry around bigger devices than their mobile phones. They want them smaller and with more capabilities. Think Terminator-style, that's where the journey is headed.

LOL, dude I doubt your wePad sells 10,000. We all saw how people were hyping the jojoo or whatever you call it and it got 90 pre orders.

 

[mccldwll]

Where did you get YOUR data?Why the heck should we believe you?

How dare you question it. He got it straight from Enderle.

 

[Vulpinemac]

I think it might be true.

I ordered one yesterday from the Apple Store for delivery by April 12.

I went to Best Buy tonight to see the iPad not expecting any stock.

They had plenty and I bought a 32 gig model. I cancelled the Apple Store order in Best Buy.

The salesman said they got far more inventory than they expected.

BTW

I love it!

My Best Buy stores (plural) were sold out quickly; out by 11am and they opened at 10. Ordered a 32Gig for wife's birthday.

Hopin' for a 32Gig 3G model for my birthday.

 

[The Samurai]

Woah - nice figures.

 

[CoreWeb]

Maybe.
I showed mine to some friends yesterday and sold 3 of them. Dang, I should have gotten a commission.

I would have shown mine off, but I was too busy... gasp... using it.

 

[johnqh]

I pre-ordered, to pick up at store. It is a Saturday launch. I have other things to do. I don't want to wait at home.

I think most pre-orders are store pick-ups, unless there is no Apple store close by. So, don't expect the number of UPS delivery is that high.

I believe each Apple store can sell one unit per minute during the open hours. Let's say that's 800 units per store for 12 to 14 hours total per day. 320000 for the weekend if they have enough stock. 12000 from Best Buys(20 each). Plus 20% with UPS, the sales is around 400k to 500k for the whole weekend.