iPad

Hello All – it looks like I will have more time on my hands over next couple of months and I’ll try to do at least couple of posts every week. I’ve noticed a significant (and steady) increase in visits over last two months and this certainly correlates with claims that up to two million units have been sold – I am happy to see such a quick build up in user base. Given the overall satisfaction of the average user I am sure Apple is on a good path to hit 6M units sold mark by EOY.

Anyhow, I am sure many have seen the latest ad for the device (it’s a marketing gem) – I am reposting it here for all of you who haven’t had a chance to see it – enjoy:

USA Today had a 2-page cover story on the iPad today – here are the highlights:

On Opportunity:
“If there ever was a space to do some land-grabbing in, this is it,” says Lahman, Gogii’s CEO.

On Sales Projections
The iPhone spawned a $1 billion-a-year industry for app developers, says analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. He predicts first-year sales of 2.7 million iPads, compared with 4 million iPhones in the first year. The iPhone has grown to become a third of Apple’s business, says Munster. The iPad has the potential to represent 10% to 15% of Apple’s annual revenue by 2012, he says.

On Development Induced by Anxiety
“I’d rather be in early than sit back and wait and let my competitors get early traction,” says Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi, a Seattle-based developer of ad-supported apps for big media brands including MSNBC and Today. “It’s a larger device, so it’s better for advertising.”

On Living Room Takeover
“This is the iPhone moving into the living room,” says Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous. Its Tap Tap Revenge is one of the iPhone’s most popular games, with 25 million downloads. “In the short term, it’s an extension of the iPhone. In the long term, it’s a brand-new platform that will move eyeballs off gaming consoles and laptops.”

On Drawbacks
Like the iPhone, the iPad doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash software, which is used to watch most online video. That mean videos at popular sites such as Hulu and ComedyCentral.com can’t be viewed, and neither can videos at thousands of other websites that rely on Flash.
Additionally, the iPad doesn’t have slots for common computer add-ons, such as, say, a USB flash drive or external hard drive. If you want to import your own video clips, for instance, you’re out of luck, unless you first put them in Apple’s iTunes software and transfer them from the computer, or figure a way to move them via the Web.

No Flash, no available slots, too big to fit into a pocket: Those are huge drawbacks, Enderle says.

And a bit of self-promotion…
USA TODAY will have an iPad app available on April 3. It will be free for the first 90 days, sponsored by Courtyard by Marriott. After that, USA TODAY will announce subscription pricing.

Prediction Markets (aka predictive markets or idea futures) have been accepted as an official decision making tool in some industries and a handful of leading companies (e.g., HP) are using them – in short, prediction markets harness the collective predictive instincts and provide an additional data point for decision-makers.

One such market is established for iPad sales estimates (see HubDub.com’s page for the source) – the current leading estimate is +6M sold iPad units in 2010. We should treat the numbers published carefully as only 56 folks had engaged in the prediction game.

Follow the link and drop a vote

About HubDub.com

Hubdub is brought to you by 4 guys and a gal in a garage in Edinburgh, Scotland.

On Hubdub you stake virtual money (H$ – Hubdub dollars) on predictions about the outcomes of real news stories. If you’re right you win more, if you’re wrong you lose what you staked. The more Hubdub dollars you have, the better Hubdubber you are (shown by your star level) and the higher on the leaderboards you climb.

An update on sales estimates: some projections now show online preorders at 200K (also reserves are estimated at 700/per store):

Apple could have 200,000 iPad pre-orders within just a week, according to new estimates. After discounting non-iPad orders, well-regarded unofficial analyst Daniel Tello has determined that Apple has obtained about 180,000 pre-orders for the tablet as of mid-Wednesday. While the rate has slowed to about 10,000 advance requests per day, the figure would be enough to pass the 200,000 mark by Friday.

Read more at Deagol’s AAPL Model’s page…

On Preorders:

Here is a couple of details from the widespread coverage:

On Friday, the first day that buyers could pre-order the device (it arrives in stores next month), Apple racked up an estimated 91,000 sales in just the first six hours of availability, putting temporarily to rest the Internet’s persistent “iPad fail” meme. (Source: Washington Post)

By one estimate, pre-orders were coming in Friday morning at the rate of 25,000 per hour (Source: CNN)

2:28 p.m. “We’re now at about 74k in 4 1/2 hours.”
4:21 p.m. “We’re at about 91k in six hours.”
(Source: CNN)

“We just bought two iPads, about 30 minutes apart. Our order IDs are 10,000 apart. Assuming those order IDs are sequential, and they appear to be, then Apple is selling 20,000 iPads per hour.”
(Source: Mashable)

“We’re at 90k in 6 hours. Keep in mind, this doesn’t include multiple orders but we have some dirty data from regular Apple business which now is about 4k orders out of the 88k orders. So, we estimate Apple has already sold about 90k today, not including in-store reserves…”
(Source: Mashable)

“Victor Castroll, an analyst at Valcent Financial Group estimated that the first day sales brought in about $75 million in revenue for Apple.”
(Source: Sacramento Business Journal)

Two more blurbs on sales projections and production targets:

• Yair Reiner (Oppenheimer) believes that Apple is still targeting a production run/sales projections of 10 million iPads for the calendar year.
• Craig Berger (FBR Capital Markets) believes that Apple has production targets of 5 million for the first half of 2010.

Needless to say the stock is 400% up since begining of last year (Source CNN Money)

The projections come via Gartner.com (Angela McIntyre, Analyst): “The most likely scenario for iPad sales this year is 4.2 million” – Gartner is underlying high price and limited technical capabilities as factors limiting sales potential. I could not find the source article, here is the link to the analyst’s homepage. TheStreet has some of the content published here.

Need a favor – if anyone has a good link with the iPad sales projections/estimates please drop it in the comments section. Gracias…

A quick note on a brief article published in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (link):

The article focuses on Apple’s decision to go with A4 instead of Intel or Qualcomm’s chips. I reckon this topic will become more discussed in next couple of months as it underline’s Apple’s strategic decision to keep focus on hardware in order to shape its future growth.

Also, I’ve seen a number of iPad unit sales volume projections for the iPad but interestingly enough Goldman’s projection seems to keep popping more frequently than others.

Goldman Sachs estimates that Apple will sell 6 million iPads this year. By contrast, the market for mobile phones will reach 1 billion units and PC sales will be about 300 million. Still, the iPad is a high-profile attempt to crack a market that Qualcomm and Intel have set their sights on, said Jagdish Rebello, an analyst at research firm ISuppli Corp.

“Intel would have wanted to get into this device, Qualcomm would have wanted to get into this device,” Rebello said. He also expects Apple to use the A4 in future models of the iPhone.

“IPad is powered by our own custom silicon,” Jobs said at the iPad’s introduction. “We have an incredible group that does custom silicon at Apple.”

The A4 image comes to you via iFixit’s Twitter feed