When I did my arbitrary sales analysis on Saturday, I figured around 300,000-400,000 were probably sold from pre-orders through to Saturday.
And, is 300,000 a failure? Is this a device no one wants? I'm sure they will sell well over 1,000,000 by year's end and I'll be one of those purchases.
It looks fantastic. This is a game changer indeed. Wonder if Ballmer is crapping himself yet? The MS boys must be redoing their entire tablet now.
A million by year's end would be a failure. I'd guess Apple is hoping to move at least 3 million this year on the bottom end.
As for MS, I doubt they are crapping themselves. They don't make hardware. As I've said elsewhere, HP's Slate will run Win7 Starter, not a cell phone OS. It will be able to multitask out of the box and run things like MS Word, Open Office, etc. And you'll be able to download Amazon's Kindle app for it. Wouldn't be surprised if HP works a deal to allow it to use Kindle for buying books. And the HP Slate has a webcam. It'll do Skype right out of the box. It also has a USB 2.0 port, so you can plug a camera, an iPod, or whatever directly into it without an adapter.
The HP Slate will blow the iPad away in features. Frankly, I think Apple rushed the iPad to market after it saw the Slate at the beginning of January. They clearly rushed the announcement because the hype for the iPad was out of control. But imagine how bad the iPad would have looked had the Slate launched first as a far more capable laptop replacement machine. Do you think the iPad would have gotten such great reviews?
And I doubt Apple ever makes an iPad as capable as the Slate because they are scared it will cannibalize MacBook sales. That's why they avoided the netbook area entirely. It's not because they thought it was a dead end, it was because they want to try to force people upwards in their product line. If the iPad is complimentary to your Mac then that is what they want. They don't want something that will make you put off buying a new Mac or stop using one all together.
I find it funny that Steve uses "game changer" and a reviewer or two that got the device earlier did as well. Is that something Apple requested them to put into the review if they liked it?
And keep perspective here. Netbooks are pacing to sell about 80 million units this year. The iPhone has sold around 45 million over its whole life span. The iPod has sold near 250 million units over the past nine years. Netbooks will surpass iPod sales in a little less than four years.
Unless people start ditching laptops for the iPad en masse, it is no game changer. I still believe it will be a profitable niche device for Apple, though I think sales will grow at first and then taper off.
The AppleTV was also called a game changer by Jobs and by people here. It was hailed as the device that would kill the DVD and physical media.
For the iPad to really be a game changer, I think it needs to sell in the stratosphere, moving around 10 million units this year with 15-20 million sold next year. The portable computing market is much larger than the iPod market. And the iPhone is nice, but it accounts for around 2% of all cell phones being used now. It is the most profitable phone out there, but that matters more to stockholders like me than it does to the average joe.
As for Best Buy sales, I'm sure they are included. They shipped a limited number to Best Buy. Manufacturers often will count limited shipments as sold.
