Roughly 50,000 units snagged in the first two hours of pre-order availability

Mar 15, 2010 07:52 GMT  ·  By
Investor Village AAPL Sanity board pie charts for estimated, day one iPad sales
   Investor Village AAPL Sanity board pie charts for estimated, day one iPad sales

Last week, Softpedia was happy to inform its readers that Apple’s online store was accepting pre-orders for the company’s newest product – the iPad. Apple is offering two separate versions of the device (WiFi and WiFi+3G), with three storage options for each of them. A breakdown by Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board looks not only at the number of units sold in the first day, but also at the device models sought by customers.

Brainstorm Tech (via CNN Money) reports that the team at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board has come up with some numbers based on its analysis of pre-orders for the iPad. It notes that Apple started taking pre-orders on Friday, and reveals that,

“Based on a sampling of 99 orders (for 110 iPads) over 19.5 hours, and not counting units that were reserved but not ordered, the Sanity team provided the following estimates.” Interestingly, Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board has been down for a while now.

“ - Nearly 120,000 iPads sold […]. 124,596 (orders of all Apple products Friday) minus 16,500 (the average number of online orders on a normal day) times 1.11 (the average number of iPads ordered per customer) equals 119,987 iPads.

“- Wi-Fi over Wi-Fi+3G. Customers preferred the cheaper (and available April 3) Wi-Fi-only iPad over the Wi-Fi plus 3G model (due out at the end of April) by roughly two to one.

“- 16, 32 and 64GB iPads are equally popular. Pre-orders were almost evenly split among the 16, 32 and 64 GB models, with a slight preference for the least-expensive 16 GB model, which starts at $499, and the most-expensive 64GB, which starts at $699 and can run as high as $829 (AT&T charges not included).”

Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group, is cited in the report as saying, “Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven't touched or for that matter, even seen in person. And, we're still three weeks away. That is amazing.”