A rather interesting question considering that over 1 million iPhones/iPod Touches were activated during the Christmas holiday weekend alone. We don't have any official figures about the iPad, only the forecasts of some analysts from the online publication of the magazine Fortune. In the graph above we have a small comparison between the sales generated by the iPad tablet and notice that between October 3, 2010 and December 31, 2010.
Those from Fortune made this graph by asking 27 professional and amateur analysts, their sales estimates varying between 5 and 7.54 million tablets sold in almost 4 months. The numbers are really impressive for a product launched 8 months ago, especially since iPad 2 will be available in just one month. If a prototype of the iPad 2 tablet had appeared on the market now, I am sure that the sales would have been somewhere around half of the values presented above.
Anyway, Fortune averaged the estimates of 27 analysts and concluded that Apple would have sold 6.35 million iPad tablets in the last fiscal quarter of 2010. Having said that, dear iPad, hello iPad 2!
If you look carefully, you will see that the 3rd estimate is made by a Romanian, Nicolae Mihalache!
| Analyst, affiliation | iPads (millions) | Date of est. |
| Bill Shope, Goldman Sachs | 7.54 | 12/12/10 |
| Alexis Cabot, Apple Finance Board | 7.46 | 12/23/10 |
| Nicolae Mihalache, Traderhood | 7.28 | 12/30/10 |
| Dennis Hildebrand, Apple's Gold | 7.25 | 12/28/10 |
| Richard Gardner, Citigroup | 7.00 | 12/2/10 |
| Doug Reid, Stifel Nicholas | 6.85 | 12/30/10 |
| Turley Muller, Financial Alchemist | 6.80 | 12/29/10 |
| Robert Paul Leitao, Apple Finance Board | 6.75 | 12/30/10 |
| Mark Moskowitz, JP Morgan | 6.71 | 12/16/10 |
| Daniel Tello, Deagol's AAPL Model | 6.54 | 12/23/10 |
| Jeff Fosberg, Apple Finance Board | 6.50 | 12/29/10 |
| Hendi Susanto, Gabelli & Co. | 6.50 | 12/17/10 |
| Scott Craig, Merrill Lynch | 6.50 | 12/9/10 |
| Rajesh Ghai, Think Equity | 6.50 | 11/29/10 |
| Tavis McCourt, Morgan Keegan | 6.50 | 12/30/10 |
| T. Michael Walkley, Canaccord Genuity | 6.30 | 12/30/10 |
| Shaw Wu, Kaufman Bros. | 6.10 | 12/16/10 |
| Horace Dediu, Asymco | 6.00 | 10/21/10 |
| Brian Marshall, Gleacher & Co. | 6.00 | 12/29/10 |
| Chris Whitmore, Deutsche Bank | 6.00 | 12/28/10 |
| Matthew Hoffman, Cowen & Co. | 5.90 | 12/16/10 |
| Maynard Um, UBS | 5.50 | 12/28/10 |
| Kathryn Huberty, Morgan Stanley | 5.50 | 12/29/10 |
| William Power, Baird | 5.50 | 11/4/10 |
| Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray | 5.50 | 11/29/10 |
| Jeff Fidacaro, Susquehanna | 5.40 | 11/29/10 |
| Daniel Ernst, Hudson Square | 5.00 | 12/29/10 |
