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iPad Opening Weekend Pre-Orders Pegged at Roughly 150,000 Units

Aside from the obvious entertainment and idle curiosity satisfied by this effort of Apple customer and fan zealotry, and concatenation of disparate information, in some sort of historically new trend, I wonder how their competitors will benefit from having such immediate and somewhat accurate information about sales of their largest perceived competitor?

Rocketman
 
karmachrome said:
I'm not an economist - what would be the benefit of this?
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Easy. Hypothetically someone puts out negative stories, the stock goes down, they buy a bunch of stock, and then the iPad comes out without problems (since they made the 'problems' up) and the stock you bought cheaply goes up!

I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but that's what the poster was talking about. It's certainly happened before in the stock market.

Alternatively, they could short the stock . You can read the link if you really care how it works, but the short version is that it's GOOD for you when a stock goes down. So if you're shorting a stock, telling bad stories about that company helps you.

All of this is illegal, by the way, so when people here say that this is what's happening, they're just guessing. There's no proof lying around on the internet, obviously.
 
I must admit I'm impressed with the initial numbers. Though I have a feeling most of those sales went to the Fanboys, Media employees and Developers.

I'm interested to see how the sales will be 1 month after it launches. That is a better barometer IMO.
 
jsbaugh said:
It also doesnt include preorders for pick up at the store so that number is obviously higher. 1 Million sold by the first couple weeks of launch would be considered a huge success.
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Especially since some of the analysts were predicting only 1-1.5 M for the entire year.
 
GeekLawyer said:
I don't quite understand the negative spin implied by the article.

These numbers are incredible. It took Apple 74 days to sell one million iPhones in 2007. If iPad sells a million units in two weeks, that's phenomenal.
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There would still be a negative reaction if there were 100 million preorders ;)
 
karmachrome said:
I'm not an economist - what would be the benefit of this?
Click to expand...

Well, if you can make up a story that affects the stock price in a predictable way, you can benefit personally by shorting with put options.

You "make" the stock go down with your bad news story blog or whatever, and then you profit because you have shorted the stock. Simple as that.

This happened before many times with AAPL stock - rumors DO cause a reaction on the market - even when the rumors are not factual.


These pre-orders estimates are just estimates, and what can seem like a 300% drop in orders (from the first hour of sales as compared to Monday AM), really doesn't tell you much about the next month. Cripes - it just went on sale on FRIDAY, and today is MONDAY! How accurate can the estimates be?
 
The Samurai said:
Sweet figures.

Do Apple have a tendency to sort of reveal 'actual' figures in a PR release or do they just keep it 'hush hush'?
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If Apple finds the number of sales to be "magical" they will announce them, otherwise you will hear nothing.

I suspect the number estimated in this story will be found to be conservative to some degree... if we ever have confirmation from Apple.
 
Rocketman said:
Aside from the obvious entertainment and idle curiosity satisfied by this effort of Apple customer and fan zealotry, and concatenation of disparate information, in some sort of historically new trend, I wonder how their competitors will benefit from having such immediate and somewhat accurate information about sales of their largest perceived competitor?
Click to expand...

It's interesting. The way people love/hate Apple and the attention they garner seems almost unprecedented to me.

I'm pretty sure you won't see many people tracking the order numbers for the HP Slate, Notion Adam, or MS Courier once/if they actually make it on the market.
 
mdatwood said:
The numbers are what I expected for the most part. The Apple fans jumped on it and everyone else is just in a wait and see mode. When you leave Apple oriented websites most people are curious about the iPad, but it's nothing like the iPhone in terms of excitement and demand.

Only time will tell if curiosity is enough to sell a $500 tertiary device to people.
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And you know this because? Yeah all those buying it are Apple fans, the audacity of some of you. When this thing sells 10 million, they'll still be saying they were bought by fanboys. I guess all those millions of iphones sold were bought by Apple fanboys!
 
Well, I glad iPad found its niche group of customers. Not exactly a tablet/netbook killer after all.

Could we move to something more important now, like iPhone 4.0 or MacBook upgrades?
 
I guess this article confirms my suspicion why the iPad launch was announced only in a handful of countries, and not in The Netherlands for example.. Grrrrr.

In relation to the previous rumors that the number of produced units in the first few weeks is low, it would make sense to do the initial launch in only a few countries. This way Apple can do a controlled scale up after the crazyness in thos countries have worn off and production has ramped up. In addition the limited launch enables Apple to estimate better what the necessary production and stock numbers should be for other countries.
 
iPad will outsell all tablet PC's this year. Sales of tablet PC's is around 4 million a year. iPad will easily beat that this year.
 
I never pre-order. But I'm also waiting to see and hold the device in my hands. Even if I order something online I like to go see it in a store before I buy it.

I'll see what the new iPhone and OS 4.0 looks like before I commit to my new mobile computing plans. But the iPad looks like a winner for me.
 
RasterScan said:
Yeah, I also didn't expect them to fly off of the shelves on launch.

By the holidays, everyone will want one.
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I'd wait until actual launch to say they won't fly off the shelves. This is still 'pre-launch'.
 
The numbers aren't great, but they're not terrible either. I think the stock drop is more due to people realizing that this isn't the "next iPod". So much hype surrounds every product that apple releases due to their history of game-changing successes, that in the weeks before any release, presale, or announcement, the stock soars, and then immediately drops.

...a ruddy FORTUNE can be made just on the predictability of Apple's stock.
 
I was one of the orders in the first 30 minutes :p
I needed to ensure that I can get an iPad to "formally" play test our upcoming iPad game, ACE Omicron.
 
motulist said:
Prediction: in the next few months Apple will change its customer order numbering system so that this type of info can't be tracked by 3rd parties in the future.
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Order Number C32ISHD4582

knewsom said:
The numbers aren't great, but they're not terrible either. I think the stock drop is more due to people realizing that this isn't the "next iPod". So much hype surrounds every product that apple releases due to their history of game-changing successes, that in the weeks before any release, presale, or announcement, the stock soars, and then immediately drops.

...a ruddy FORTUNE can be made just on the predictability of Apple's stock.
Click to expand...

These numbers are fairly strong given the amount of negative press the iPad has gotten. There are plenty of people who will see someone using one, or use one in the Apple store and will simply have to have one. I see two million units shipping in the first two months or so.
 
knewsom said:
The numbers aren't great, but they're not terrible either. I think the stock drop is more due to people realizing that this isn't the "next iPod".
Click to expand...

If these numbers are accurate and the current "slower" steady rate continues until April 3, that will be 500k pre-orders, not counting in-store pickups. Sounds pretty great to me.

I also wonder what effect, if any, not having the 3G models ready by April 3 is having on pre-orders of those.
 
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