“Apple fans have breathlessly awaited Apple’s entry into the tablet computer market. Since the company unveiled the iPad in late January, investors have jumped on the bandwagon, too, running up Apple’s stock more than 10 percent,” Stone reports. “Part of that rise can be attributed to the steady rise in sales of the iPhone and the company’s Mac computers. But much of it clearly has to do with tablet fever. On the day this month when Apple made the completely unsurprising announcement that the iPad would go on sale on April 3, the stock jumped nearly 4 percent.”
“Expectations are clearly high. Now the iPad has to meet them,” Stone reports. “Apple has given no public indication of what kinds of sales it expects, or what may constitute success. But at the iPad introduction in January, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, implicitly set a lofty standard. He said the iPad would offer an experience that was superior to that of netbooks, a rapidly growing category of inexpensive and lightweight laptops that accounted for $11 billion in global sales last year.”
Stone reports, “But analysts and investors are searching for their own ways to judge the iPad over the short and long term. Their projections vary, but many Apple analysts seem to think the company will sell around a million iPads by the end of its quarter in June, and around 5 million by the end of 2010.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Both figures are too low. Apple will sell more than 1 million iPad units by the end of this quarter and more than 5 million units in 2010.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “John P.” for the heads up.]
As usual the hype is not directly from Apple.
Yes it can.
Can Apple’s iPad live up to the hype?….are you fscking kidding?
and Netbooks are ghastly, so being better than a netbook is not saying much.
Live up to the hype? Yes. Live up to The Great White Hype? I can’t make caviar out of fish eggs!
Netbooks are disgusting and designed by the sales team… And what “Tablet Computer Market” is there to enter really?
Once you have put up with the inferior issues associated with “netbooks” running Windows and tried some (rather klunky) tablets, an iPhone seems like heaven.
With more screen, more virtual keyboard, more feature support and more battery life than anyone in the tablet kingdom (OK almost, but certainly the most for a full-featured tablet), is there any doubt left.
No! Heaven is here Friday.
Uhm, don’t they only have to beat the KINDLE to be declared a huge success?
Substitute iPhone for iPad and cell phone for tablet computer and this article reads like something from a few years ago when Apple announced the iPhone.
This is going to have a healthy halo effect as well… My Sister’s family is a perfect example. She has a Windows laptop with more buttons than NORAD’s control center that she can’t unplug for more than 2 minutes because the battery is equivalent to a AA.
4 kids, Husband, and her… Six people. No iPhones due to his business using Verizon and PCs (He owns it). The only Apple product that has made it’s way into that house are a couple of iPod touch’s that the kids use for games and music.
She want’s an iPad really bad. She’s all excited about the iBooks thing… Once she finally gets her hands on a real Apple product, I bet there’s gonna be 5 or 6 MacBooks, and eventually iPhones in that house.
I would say Apple as not set any expectations on sales. Netbooks come at a cost to their makers because in this recessionary market when people that want a new computer and can find a cheap lost cost replacement they’ll go for a Netbook and to build market share netbook makers are selling them in most cases at break even or even at a loss. Netbooks have cannibalized the PC market so much that PC makers are sell their old bread and butter models at a loss just to move inventory in recent days I’ve seen PC makers slash prices on desktop and laptop models so much that even at a heavily discounted volume pricing on the parts would end up costing more then the fully assembled PC price. The Manufacture may be getting preferred contract priced but the difference isn’t covering labor cost, packaging costs, shipping costs, Microsoft’s OEM Tax or any of the fixed costs associated with operating a business. If your in the business of making computers you better find a way to get people to buy your shit at a price that offers you some meaning full profits or your going to be out of business PDQ. Microsoft is not going to feel sorry for the PC makers that are selling for a loss and let them not pay Microsoft Window’s Taxes. NO! Microsoft is going to want that money even if it put’s more then a few PC OEM out of business.
As one PC maker put it, we never should have got into the netbook game at a price that was so unprofitable, and at a higher price people would not have wanted the limited pieces of junk.
I predicted 10 million by yearend. 5 Million delivered and 5 million on backorder.
I am upping to 15 million ordered, 6 million on backorder.
Curious to find out whether the iPad delivers any better PDF file management experience than what the iPhone has: iDisk, email attachment, or third party. Ideal solution here will allow PDF docs to be organized alongside iBooks somehow.
Can’t wait to get mine. Shame there’s no UK release date yet.
Will it be a hit? Most definitely. Anyone who says otherwise is going to look like a fool 3 years from now…
11,453,772 iPads in 2010.
In order to gross the $11B in revenue mentioned for netbooks in 2009, Apple would have to sell over 22 million of the low-end iPad model, which won’t happen. They couldn’t make that many in 2010.
But it is reasonable to believe that Apple might gross around $4B to $6B from sales of 6M to 10M iPads (range of models). That would be an impressive chunk of change for anyone, particularly for an initial release of a relatively expensive example of consumer electronics. Just of the iPad sales in its first quarter will qualify it as a hit when compared to, say, the Kindle…
I think it will once OS 4.0 is released.
As an owned of iPod touch & iPhones, I can see where the iPad will fall short initially.
I pre-ordered one, so don’t cry I’m a hater. Just the opposite, but you can’t not notice some things that will need to change.
I have faith they will.
Yeah, we’ll see how much of the iPad hype actually turn into sales. My guess is that they will sell a million the first day, then those people will quickly loose interest in the device and go back to their laptops for web browsing.
The problem with the iPad is that it can’t replace anything. The iPod was a hit because it replaced your CD player with something better. The iPhone was a hit because it replaced your feature phone with something better. The AppleTV, on the other hand, failed in the market because it couldn’t replace anything. You still needed a DVD player and a cable box and a game console, etc. It was just something else to buy.
The iPad is more like the AppleTV than it is the iPhone
@KingMe!
You bring up an interesting point. How many iPads does apple have to sell to beat the 2009 netbook revenue of $11B. I’m not sure it will happen by 2011, but I think there’s a realistic chance it could happen in the iPad’s first 12 months. Especially if you count accessories. And I’m sure the profit margins on the accessories are huge.
I bought a 16GB WiFi only iPad and after a case, stand, and keyboard the price came to $636. And that’s for the cheapest iPad. I expect the average iPad order is more like $700+ once the 3G ones start moving. The iPad will become more and more popular as people see them and realize first hand how cool they are. I can see iPad sales increasing each quarter this year, until a frenzy during the holiday season. There will be another huge increase in sales when the iPad 2 comes out. If Apple releases that within 12 months of April 3, the total 12 month sales are going to be huge!
Oh, happy day. Just got shipment notification
from Apple. iPad 64 to be delivered by 4/3/’10
Saturday.
I see the iPad as a devise that will allow casual web browsing and video and music files to be played where you want them, from the living room to the “library”. I don’t have to turn my iMac on when it is not necessary. I see it more of an output devise that will also allow the user to create as well view. If you are an artist or designer or video maker you can display your work. It has such potential that is limited only by what your imagination. I look foreword to buying in the near future.
Way to go out on a limb, MDN. The article says around 1m and 5m, and you say “Both figures are too low. Apple will sell more than 1 million iPad units by the end of this quarter and more than 5 million units in 2010.”
Thanks for clearing up the fact that when you say “Too Low”, you mean more than the article states. A whole sentence for that? Without any quantity guesses of your own. That’s like guessing “your number +1” at the JellyBean Jar.
Bold move!
@ Dallasm,
“The problem with the iPad is that it can’t replace anything. The iPod was a hit because it replaced your CD player with something better.”
The iPad will be a hit because it will replace your iPod touch, net book or PC Laptop with something better.
The iPod touch will be replaced because the iPad is bigger and more powerful.
The net book will be replaced because the iPad does everything a net book does and it does it better than the net book can.
The PC laptop will be replaced because most PC laptops have horrible specs and are poor performers and all PC laptops run gawd awful Windows.
Once Windows users see their friends’ iPad experiences, they will be lining up at the Apple stores trying to buy their own iPad.
Even more telling are the numbers in the article that were quoted by MDN. If Apple sells 5 million units for an average price of $500 in the next 9 months, it will generate $2.5 billion in revenue. All of the netbooks are expected to generate $11 billion this year and they have been on the market place for 2-3 years. These numbers mean that if the iPad is added to the netbook catagory, Apple will own 20 percent of the marketplace in less than a year.
The media has been daring Apple to develop a netbook. I believe that they have responded and will quite literally “blow the netbooks out of the water.” Of course the media will quite carefully put the iPad in a different category so it will not make the netbooks look bad. OTOH, in my opinion, Apple’s response to the netbook is an iPod Touch.
Apple would just have to sell a million iPads for it’s profit on those iPads to exceed the total profit made on all net book sales in the last 12 months.
It’s not a big target Apple’s shooting for.