Apple announced official iPad sales numbers for Saturday, the first day the much-ballyhooed tablet device was available in stores. More than 300,000 iPads were sold by midnight, April 3, the Cupertino, Calif. company said Monday morning.
“It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world — it’s going to be a game changer,” CEO Steve Jobs declared via a press statement. The number reflect pre-orders, shipments to partners and retail sales. More than 1 million apps were downloaded and 250,000 e-books from the iBookstore were downloaded Saturday, according to the company.
The official first-day sales figures were much lower than some analysts had earlier predicted. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster had expected up to 700,000 iPads would sell on the first day. Brian Marshall of Broadpoint AmTech 525,000 iPads would sell during the weekend. Apple’s figures also deflated early estimates from amateurs who believed 500,000 pre-orders alone were sold, based on online information.
The 300,000 sales number, although lower than some analysts projected, is in line with the 270,000 iPhones Apple sold when it launched its handset in 2007.
[via All Things Digital and AppleInsider]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
