The latest Apple iPad went on sale Friday, March 16th. As of today the company says it’s sold 3 million of them, which Apple says makes this the strongest iPad launch yet.
That sounds pretty impressive… and it is. But it’s also worth noting that the third generation iPad had been available for pre-order since March 7th. Many of the people who ordered online and had their tablets delivered on Friday placed their orders earlier… so Apple kind of sold 3 million units in 2 weeks rather than 4 days.
Either way, that’s an awful lot of tablets in a very short period of time.
Apple’s new iPad has a 9.7 inch, 2048 x 1536 pixel display, an Apple A5x processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB to 64GB of storage. It’s available in WiFi-only or 3G/4G models with prices ranging from $499 to $829.
Right now the tablet is available for purchase in more than 10 countries including the US, but it will go on sale in 25 more countries on March 23rd.
Over the last year Android devices have started to take some of the consumer tablet market share, with the relatively inexpensive Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet leading the way.
But Apple still sells more tablets than all other companies combined. With the successful launch of the company’s third tablet, along with Apple’s decision to continue selling the iPad 2 while reducing the starting price to $399, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
@darkseider – The number isn’t as underwhelming as you think. Many of the people upgrading from iPad 1 and 2 sell their old tablet, creating new iOS users that way.Â
3 million new iPads sold in four days. Â Question is how many of them went to people who upgraded from an original iPad or to Apple lemmings who sold/traded their iPad2 or for that matter just bought it because it was Apple and already had an iPad2. Â Agreed a sale is a sale but assuming that a good majority of sales went to existing iPad owners/users the number becomes somewhat underwhelming.
STFU