iPad rush is already over

No shortage as yet

THE EARLY RUSH to place pre-orders for the iPad has slowed down to something more akin to a trickle only days after Apple opened up its US pre-order program. On Friday last week, Apple had as many pre-orders as 25,000 an hour, but by Sunday this had slowed to a much more reasonable estimate of 1,000 units per hour.

The Brainstorm Tech blog which is a part of CNNMoney.com is quoting the same source as earlier and the numbers are based on a somewhat rough speculation which comes from order numbers submitted by volunteers. This makes the figures somewhat unreliable and should be taken with a pinch of salt. The analyst who’s put together the figures is estimating that Apple had 152,000 by midnight Sunday, although this figure doesn’t include iPads reserved for pick-up.

That’s still a pretty impressive number, although the analyst is expecting that half a million pre-orders and reservations will be racked up within two weeks ahead of the availability date, which is the 3rd of April. Further predictions include a million units sold by two weeks after launch, although this all would depend on Apple’s ability to ship units, especially as there’s a rumour suggesting production delays.

In related news, the sale of Mac computers is up 39 percent during the first two months of the year and interestingly enough, so is the sale of iPods, albeit at a mere seven percent, but this is the first time in 16 month’s that the iPod sales are up. February proved to be the better month and if the trend of previous years holds true, March should be an even better month for Apple.S|A

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