As of midnight Saturday, Apple had sold more than 300,000 iPads in the U.S. This figure reflected deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also reported that new iPad owners downloaded more than one million apps from the App Store and 250,000 e-books from its iBookstore on the iPad's first day.
"It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world--it’s going to be a game-changer," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad."
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CNNMoney.com reported that published sales "estimates--from those who dared make them--ranged from 250,000 to 700,000." One analyst, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, had doubled an earlier estimate of 200,000–300,000 iPads to 600,000–700,000 Saturday night, but "issued a mea culpa Monday morning after Apple sent out a press release with its official iPad sales figures."
"We originally estimated online-sales to be about 75% of all iPad sales; however, it appears that online pre-orders made up about 50% of the sales, resulting in a significant unit difference," he explained.
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Public acceptance for a device combining elements of a laptop and smartphone may take time, Michael Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital, told the New York Times. "This device is the leading edge in a market that is still being created, so lots of folks are still trying to figure out the relevance of the iPad to them. But given that not everyone understands what it does yet, it’s a pretty good launch at the end of the day."
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Matthew Miller reviewed the iPad's e-book buying options--the iBooks store, as well as Kindle and Kobo apps--for ZDNet.com and came away "quite impressed that we already have three extremely functional and capable clients on the device.... Each of these three has their strengths and I personally plan to keep all three on my iPad since I have a varied e-book collection. Honestly though, the Apple iBooks app has a great UI and I would love to use it for more content. When the Barnes & Noble eReader application is rolled out I will also take a look at that and post on my thoughts too. I have to spend many more hours reading e-books on the iPad before I can decide if any of my e-book readers are passed along."
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People power in a digital age. Talented, well-trained floor staffs may have caused a sales "ripple effect" at Best Buy stores--the only retailer besides Apple selling the iPad--during launch weekend. The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog cited a research note by Credit Suisse analysts, which observed: "According to our Apple analyst, Bill Shope, some stores had 100-200 iPads to start and then received additional shipments during Saturday (which compares to some expectations of just 15 in total per store). More important.... is the reminder that Best Buy occupies a unique place in today's retail world, with the only nationwide well trained salesforce to sell value-added consumer electronics. If there was an app for that, we think the app would point to an undervalued stock and Best Buy remains our favorite name in our hardline retail universe."
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In the New York Times, author Marc Aronson examined the issue of copyrights for nonfiction writers with the launch of the iPad, which "many see this as a Gutenberg moment, with digital multimedia moving one step closer toward replacing old-fashioned books. Speaking as an author and editor of illustrated nonfiction, I agree that important change is afoot, but not in the way most people see it. In order for electronic books to live up to their billing, we have to fix a system that is broken: getting permission to use copyrighted material in new work. Either we change the way we deal with copyrights--or works of nonfiction in a multimedia world will become ever more dull and disappointing."