Analyst Expects Apple To Sell At Least 1 Million iPads On Friday
by Brent Dirks
March 12, 2012
Friday’s launch of the new iPad should be yet another day for the record books, according to one analyst.
Appleinsider has a report from analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray, who says that Apple should sell at least 1 million iPads on Friday during launch day. That figure would be a big boost to Apple’s iPad numbers, which fell off after the holiday season in anticipation of the new model.
With Apple looked on to sell at least 10.1 million iPads in the quarter by Wall Street, strong launch day numbers would help make that goal possible.
"That said, even if iPad sales are less than 10 (million) in (the March quarter), we see it as a win-win given investors will attribute the miss to a slowdown ahead of the new iPad and start to anticipate a strong rebound in the June-12 quarter," Munster wrote.For comparison, Apple sold more than 300,000 iPads on the launch day of the original version. Apple never provided launch day numbers for the iPad 2 since the supply was strongly constrained. If pre-orders are any sign, Apple should be very close to hitting that magical number. In the United States, the new iPad will now ship in 2-3 weeks after the original, launch-day supplies were sold out by Friday. And while some have knocked the new iPad for being just an incremental upgrade compared to the iPad 2, it does indeed look like Apple has another hit on its hands, just like the similarly derided iPhone 4S.
