Apple 'We Sold 300k iPads, Not 700k'

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster may want to re-think his revision of predicted iPad sales, as he decided Sunday to nearly double his estimates from the original 200-300k to a whopping prediction that Apple sold between 600-700k iPads (including online pre-orders which started on March 12th) on the first day (4/3).

Apple themselves have released their numbers which are inline with Munster's previous prediction Apple today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores.

Were there actually 300k iPads sold? That's rather difficult to say. Apple's notorious for their 'interesting' estimation tactics. They give estimates based on the number of units they shipped out to stores and partners, so these might not be actual sales numbers. Stores could still be sitting on a surplus of iPads and the actual sales numbers could be considerably lower.

Update: I jumped the gun with a bit of misreading, these aren't weekend numbers as I thought. Guess I overlooked the "midnight Sat. part." However considering it was Easter Sunday I still doubt these numbers were much higher for a total weekend sale. I also doubt they sold every unit shipped, which again drops the total sales figures. My guess would be they sold somewhere near 250k.

What does that mean for Apple and the iPad, not much really. The numbers aren't staggering, but they aren't all that disappointing either. Given the fact that it was Easter weekend, and the iPad had very few actual hands on reviews I'd say they did fairly well. Now that more people have their hands on the device and we are seeing a mixed bag of reviews it will be interesting to see if sales continue at a brisk pace or not.