Apple announced over the weekend that it had completely sold out of its pre-order stock for the new iPad, stating that demand for the new tablet is “off the charts.” Now analyst Gene Munster is predicting that Apple will sell over 1 million units during the new iPad launch this Friday, March 16th.
Munster says that if the average selling price of the new iPad is $650 (the different storage models and 4G versions need to be considered), Apple would net a cool $650 million on launch day. Considering it only costs Apple about $310 to make each iPad, that’s quite the profit margin.
The original iPad moved 300,000 units on its launch day back in 2010. Apple never gave official numbers for iPad 2 launch day sales, but analysts predicted between 500,000 and 1 million units sold during the opening weekend. More than 55 million iPads have been sold to date. Conservative estimates have predicted that Apple will sell at least 48 million iPads in 2012 alone.
Apple announced its third-generation iPad at an event in San Francisco, California last Wednesday, March 7th. The new iPad features a Retina display, faster hardware, better cameras, and 4G LTE networking. Tim Cook said that Apple is leading the “post-PC revolution” with products like the iPhone and iPad, and sales numbers indicate that he is right.
[via CNET]
