Paul Thurrott blows it: Thinks Apple sold ‘only’ 300,000 iPads, forgets weeks of iPad 3G pre-orders

Apple Online Store“Build it and they will come: That seems to be Apple’s mantra these days, and if the lines that formed in front of Apple Stores all around the Unites States this past Saturday are any indication, the Cupertino consumer electronics giant could have another hit on its hands,” Paul Thurrott writes for Windows IT Pro. “That’s when Apple’s eagerly awaited iPad went on sale, and according to the company, it sold more than 300,000 units on its first day.”

MacDailyNews Take: Operative phrase: “more than.” As in “way more than.” Keep that in mind as you read on.

Thurrott continues, “300,000 is a big number… But that figure is much lower than estimates—Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster had pegged the figure at over twice that, or up to 700,000 units—and it includes presales, so all the sales didn’t really come on that first day. And to draw an obvious comparison, when Apple launched the iPhone 3GS last year, it sold 1 million units in three days. It’s likely that iPad sales petered out after the initial burst of excitement ended Saturday.”

MacDailyNews Take: Wrong. Apple’s “over 300,000” number includes precisely “deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores… as of midnight Saturday, April 3.” Apple’s “over 300,000” number therefore does not include any of the iPad 3G units that were pre-ordered between March 12 when pre-orders began and midnight Saturday, April 3. Apple likes their secrets and likely left that number unmentioned in order to confuse the competition and, perhaps, identify illiterate tools like Paul Thurrott (and maybe even to drive accuracy-obsessed people like us crazy). We believe the number of iPad 3G units pre-ordered through midnight April 3rd to be at least 100,000 units and possibly significantly more.

Thurrott continues, “At these prices, the iPad should be able to replace some device, but it can’t. It’s an accessory—a pricy and unnecessary accessory, and that fact will likely further dim demand going forward.”

Full article – Think Before You Click™ – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Unless Apple issues a correction to their press release from this morning, we strongly believe that Apple has sold 400,000-500,000 iPad units in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales include pre-ordered iPads (“Wi-Fi” and “Wif-Fi + 3G” models), deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]

47 Comments

  1. You mean, Apple blew it, since Apple announced that they sold 300,000 iPads, INCLUDING PRE-ORDERS.

    MDN just throws stuff out there without fact checking.

    Oh, and wait until the fanboys and “average consumers” who don’t live in the Apple Hype Reality Distortion Field realizse that:

    1.) It has the same OLD OUTDATED A8 processor that is found in the iPhone and not the new A9 Cortex with multiple processor cores that everybody expected it would have. FAIL

    2.) It only has 256 MB of RAM (the Palm Pre has more) exactly like the iPhone. No multi-tasking here. FAIL

    3.) It actually has lower resolution per DPI then the iPhone despite the scaled up screen. Pathetic. Unacceptable and major FAIL.

    4.) It’s twice as fast as the iPhone 3GS but guess what: that is due tot he fact that they have optimized the OS in 3.2. iPhone OS 2.0 to 3.0 was orders of magnitutdes faster. When they release the new iPhone OS to catch up with the iPad it will be just as fast (if not faster). So FAIL on that too.

    I challenge an Apple Lemming to respond to any of these points. Just one.

    For Apple you are all just a buncn of suckers. Revolutionary? LMFAO. How about Regressionary: yesterdays technology at todays price.

  2. “PlayNice” is obviously one of those illiterate tools like Paul Thurrott. Apple stated, “deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers.” This, by definition, does not include iPad 3G units.

  3. At PlayNice,

    I’ll take that challenge.
    Regarding your points, I’d bet 95% of the public couldn’t give a sh*t about specs. Like a TV, they just want an appliance that works.

    It’s nerds like you that are too busy criticising the seat you are sitting in, you forgot why you went to the theatre.

  4. Everyone of the people that I have shown my new iPad too is absolutely amazed at what it can do. The Netflix app is a killer app.
    Anyone complaining about the hardware hasn’t seen it work.
    It’s the software stupid.

  5. “At these prices, the iPad should be able to replace some device, but it can’t.”

    Ummm… maybe wait a few months at the least before making such a sweeping claim?

    This alone shows he’s being dishonest – he *wants* it to fail.

  6. Err, no playnice. YOU FAIL.

    The pre-orders include only units DELIVERED, that means, it doesn’t count any of the iPads scheduled to arrive later nor the MASSIVE QUANTITIES of pre-ordered 3G iPads.

    and

    1)This “OLD OUTDATED” processor beats the crap of any Atom netbook. ’nuff said.

    2)SOFTWARE tells us its only 256Mb of RAM, iFixit’s scans say it’s 512. There is a possibility that half the RAM is hidden from devs before iPhone OS 4.0 (Multitasking, for example)

    3)131ppi is much more ppi than a standard netbook screen. You’ll not be holding the iPad at the same distance from your face as an iPhone, so this is hardly a good point. Following your troll logic, 50″ TVs suck because their ppi is lower than a common computer screen

    4) 3.2 isn’t a major release. They already did a massive optimization from 2.0 to 3.0, which left old iPhone much, much faster than newer-and-supposedly-more-powerful-yet-ass-slow-due-to-shitty-OS Androids and WinMos. There is a certain limit to how much you can optimize something.
    Not to mention A4 is custom-made.

    But how much old or new doesn’t matter in the end because guess what? It kicks everyone else’s ass. And that’s why you stupid trolls are in denial.

  7. @PlayNice:

    #2: it has less RAM than the Pre, but has better battery life, a more fluid UI, better and more apps, and has sold more in one day than the Pre has sold TO DATE.

    #4: Who cares WHY it’s twice as fast as the iPhone 3GS: it’s twice as fast as the 3GS.

    Do I get a prize?

  8. You are eat up with the dumbass.

    1.) Get your head out of your ass

    2.) The number does not include 3G version preorders. Or are you too fscking stupid that you need to hit 3rd grade and learn how to read. They said deliveries, dumbass.

    3.) It has multitasking, or are you a moron who never learned to read. It plays music while you are surfing the web jacking off to Ballmer. All sorts of other apps can and do run in the background while you are peeing in your diapaer, asswipe.

    4.) Yes, its twice as fast as iPhone. So, dufus dumbass, STFU.

    5.) Screen resolution is breathtaking, as witnessed by every single reviewer of iPad. Get that head out of the anal cavity.

    6.) It has 512 megs of RAM, as Xrays show. Or are you one of the stupid asswipes with a Palm Pre with a scratched screen, no iTunes connectivity and with a phone from a company that is going broke?

    LOL!

  9. All these PC loosers are drunk on specs, because that’s the only way they can feel they are making progress, since they are stuck on a decade old OS, that was outdated decades ago, and was a POS a decade ago.

  10. I can’t believe the amount of FUD excreting around the release of the iPad. It seems to have deepened the hatred of anything Apple, in general.

    I admonished a few people that they have no concept of what they are talking about, . . . and that in two years they’ll see iPads everywhere.

  11. PlayNice is hilarious. All you have to do is replace iPad with iPhone and you’ve got a time machine! You find yourself way back when the iPod first came out and the trollies trotted out their lists, proclaiming that it was a failure! And when the iPhone came out, they brought out that very same list! Amazing! What’s next, PlayNice, the iPad is a failure because it doesn’t have a floppy drive?

    We’re not laughing with you. We’re laughing at you.

  12. @PayNice –
    Why the anger? The first to get angry loses the fight, even if that person is justified in their anger.

    I don’t see why you feel justified in behaving this way. Buy one or don’t buy one, participation is voluntary.

  13. @ PlayNice

    Funny name for such a troll!

    You can’t read either. 300K of “deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores… as of midnight Saturday, April 3.”.

    Since none of the 3G ipads were “delivered”, the count does not include all of the pre-orders.

    re: “Oh, and wait until the fanboys and “average consumers” who don’t live in the Apple Hype Reality Distortion Field realizse that:…”,

    First, the average user doesn’t even understand any of that, let alone care. What a lot of tech folks seem to forget is that the average user is not a computer geek. All they care about is does the machine do what I want it to do? I am a computer geek, and I love mine.

    This is not a machine for everybody. No one machine is. That doesn’t mean it won’t be extremely successful. We will obviously have to wait awhile to truly decide how successful it really is, but I think it is a game changer, and fully realize that it is an evolutionary step. More and better will come.

    What I don’t understand is people like you with such vitriol and hatred. FAIL FAIL FAIL! Lots of machines ultimately FAIL in the marketplace, but I doubt you are out there yelling FAIL FAIL FAIL at all of them.

    But since this machine is made by Apple, it is the subject of such scorn and ridicule. Is the IPad perfect? No. Is it pretty cool? Yes. Will people buy them, I think so. Time will tell. The one thing you can’t argue is that Apple tries new things, and largely succeeds. Yes, it occasionally fails. Why folks like you take pleasure in hoping that everything Apple tries must fail is very curious. Edison tried how many hundreds (thousands?) of times to get the lightbulb correct? And even when he got it working, it was made better and better.

    Thank goodness for companies like Apple that try new things, many times before their time, that eventually shape the entire computing experience for all of us.

    New things like the iPad are supposed to be fun! If you don’t like it, don’t get it. No problem. I love all the folks who criticize as “arm chair” quarterbacks. Bitching is easy… Doing, well, that is hard. Apple does. You bitch. Sad really.

  14. Playnice, are you feeling a little left out? It’s okay, breathe in deep, now hold it, a little longer, that’s it. Now let it all out nice and slow. …

    Now doesn’t that feel better? Run along home now, I think I hear your Mommy calling.

  15. Letter to Steve Jobs…

    Hey Steve. I’m Eric. I wrote you an email last night praising your accomplishment with the iPad. It is amazing. Magical….even though there is not a Calculator with it. No biggie. Safari, iBooks, Youtube, and the myriad of 3rd party Apps make up for that.

    So, here I am. I’m underemployed. I was thinking I could write articles way better than Paul Thurrott. But I need access. Like an invite to this iPhone 4.0 event. Or any other Apple events. Or maybe an interview with you or Ives. Hey, we’d have fun. I’d make you laugh, and give you insights from the common nerd. Plus, the side effect is that I’d be really good at making Thurrott sound more like an idiot (not that he needs any more help in that department).

    Anyhow, think on it. I mean, I can do what he does regarding Windows products in my sleep…..

  16. Thurrott is well on the way to an Enderle level of cluelessness. The Windows Weekly thing he does with Leo Laporte spends the first 18 minutes on, not Windows, but the iPad.

    Leo thinks it is a revolutionary device, and in this video podcast, you can see Thurrott’s pained expression as this sinks in. He’s reduced to claiming that “Windows Phone 7”, or whatever it is called this week, will be HUGE, much more important than the iPad.

    Almost parenthetically, Thurrott relates a tail of a good samaritan who helped fix a WinMo 6.5 phone that he bought; the samaritan replaces a smashed screen for him. The interesting bit is the $625(!!) be paid for an unlocked WInMo 6.5 phone.

    Yes, this is the same Paul Thurrott who says the iPad is “too expensive”. This takes cluelessness to a new level.

  17. If this statement is precise: Apple’s “over 300,000” number includes precisely “deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores… as of midnight Saturday, April 3.”, then this does not even include the wifi iPads pre ordered for April 12 delivery.

  18. This is just the first release of the iPad. Apple’s MO is to release a basic functioning model and let the market guide direction. Apple has been thinking about how to build a tablet for a very long time. See this 1990 vision of a tablet:

    I am guessing that we will see some form of this vision by the third generation iPad.

  19. Enderle is a tool
    Thurrott is a tool
    Play Nice is a tool

    Cripes I am surrounded by so many tools I should open up a work shop.

    In the background all I can hear is the plaintive whine of a little girl saying……..its not the right coloooorrrrrrrr!

  20. I don’t remember the names or the dates, but this all reminds me of the General in WWII who was ordered not to kick the Germans out of some town in Europe. Might have been Patton in Italy or Sicily.

    After repeated messages from headquarters exhorting him not to take the town, he answered:

    What the hell do you want me to do, give it back?

    (of course, in this politically correct world, he would have, but that is another story)

    So what if it is 300,000 or 700,00 iPads, is Apple supposed to just give the money back because some jerk argues about numbers that will eventually come to rest anyway.

    Too much free time. Now give me 1000 pushups.

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