That tells them how many were sold - at least a minimum. If 542,000 unique iPads have visited their clients' websites, then at least 542,000 iPads were sold (minus perhaps a few thousand on display in Apple Stores and Best Buy locations). The actual sales number must be higher.
Apple didn't hype the iPad. There was one press conference, one Jobs interview, and one ad that hasn't run all that much. The press did it on its own - obviously based on their experience that Apple products are worth writing about.
As for 'crippled', that's absurd. In what way was it crippled? Lack of Flash, USB, serial ports, eSATA ports, etc is not 'crippled'. It's simply a design tradeoff. Apple is smart enough to realize that you don't improve a product simply by adding features. Too bad the rest of the industry never understood that.
If he accessed one of the web sites covered by this company, then it would be included.
iSuppli's numbers are useless. They don't include any overheads, R&D, support, warranty, marketing, etc costs. A more realistic way to figure it is that Apple averages about 40% margin on iPhones, so call it the same. 550,000 iPads sold at an average of $600 (including accessories) is $330 M. At 40% gross margins, that's about $132 M gross margin. Overheads are typically around 20%, so, Apple probably earned $66 M in the first few days.
Not really. 300,000 were sold on Saturday. Assume that all of them were activated by today. Now, Apple has had 3 more delivery days (and 4 more in-store sale days) to sell an extra 250,000 units. Not at all unreasonable.
Funny that the people who actually own them and have used them disagree with them. So who should we believe- the people who own the product or some Apple-bashing troll?
If you worry about holding a 1.5 pound slate in one hand and typing with the other, just what is the alternative? A 6 pound laptop? A 2.5 pound netbook - which is far clumsier to hold? Seems that it's your expectations that are pretty unrealistic. Lots of people don't have any problem holding 2-3 pound books.
Right. That's why the whole world is talking about how they'll revolutionize the industry.
Who ever said that the iPad was going to replace the entire computer market? That's a silly strawman argument.
Wrong. An estimate is a figure obtained by some type of methodology. You create a formula and then plug in the data and get an estimated result. There's no rule that an estimate needs to be rounded to any given number of significant figures (although the last few digits are obviously not likely to be very accurate).
Maybe you should repeat it until someone actually believes you. If that ever happens.
Exactly. The iPad is a media content VIEWER. It was never meant to be importing and Photoshopping multi-GB RAW files.
I like your idea (similar idea - Hyundai is going to be giving out an iPad with one of their high end cars - the owner's manual will be on the iPad). You COULD just put the photos onto the iPad and use Apple's software. A little clumsy, but my guess is that a bride who got her photos that way wouldn't mind that it's not quite as polished as what you'd like. Alternatively, go to Apple's developer forum and post a message with your idea to see if you can get someone interested.
I'm guessing they'll announce when they hit the first million (about April 15, probably). Keep in mind several factors:
1. Pre-orders have not all shipped. Some were showing delivery dates of April 10 or later. Numbers will drop off after that preliminary surge is over.
2. Preliminary estimates were that the number of 3G orders would be comparable to the number of WiFi orders. That means that Apple will likely sell something like 500,000 3G units in the first few days.
Put it all together and you're probably looking at 2 million by the end of April.
