Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray noted Tuesday that the original iPad launched at 221 U.S. Apple retail stores and most of Best Buy's about 1,100 American stores last year. The iPad 2 will debut with much greater availability, at more than 10,000 stores of retail partners in addition to 236 current Apple retail stores.
The iPad will also go on sale in the U.S. Friday at Walmart, Target, and AT&T and Verizon stores. Munster expects the new model to outsell its predecessor, which reached a million sales in just 28 days.
"Generally, the length of the lines at Apple retail stores on launch day have been a helpful early indication of demand," Munster wrote in a note to investors. "However, factors like online pre-orders, simultaneous international launches, weather, timing in the day and the day of the week can all impact a consumer's willingness to go stand in line, but may not necessarily be indicative of immediate purchase intentions."
Apple's launch and expansion of the iPad 2 will occur much faster than with the original iPad. Both the Wi-Fi-only and 3G-capable models will be available for purchase from day one, as opposed to 2010, when the 3G model launched a month later in the U.S.
International expansion will occur more quickly too, as Apple plans to have the iPad 2 available in 27 countries in the first two weeks. Last year, iPad shortages forced Apple to delay the international launch of its touchscreen tablet by a month.
Munster has predicted that Apple will sell 5.5 million iPads in the device's launch quarter. That would easily best the 3.27 million iPads it sold in the same frame one year ago.
He also sees sales of the iPad 2 increasing to 5.6 million in its first full quarter of availability. During the company's fourth fiscal quarter of last year, it sold 4.19 million of the first-generation iPad.
67 Comments
I think a lot of people are missing out on the cheapness of an upgrade for those of us who will sel the original iPad ( most).
Most of last years 15M will upgrade, and the cost is just - if we stay with the same equivalent model - the cost of the depreciation of last years model. That seems to be about $200.
The "event lines" and early shortages generate free press and consumer excitement, but they can quickly become overplayed. I'm will be happy if Apple has the stock for a big intro...
...of course, if they have such strong demand that they sell out of even their boldest internal prediction, well, that would bee cool too!
Shorter lines? Apple is doomed!?
(At least, so will go the tech headlines......)
Where does everyone bet the shortest lines will be? Target seems like a good candidate. I would just order online but I'd like to play with it over the weekend.
Shorter lines? Apple is doomed!?
(At least, so will go the tech headlines......)
That's what happened with the Verizon iphone cause 9/10 of folks were buying online.
So they cut that to the day off, meaning you won't get it until more like Monday and hope that most folks will just come into the store. Target et al never have as much as the Apple stores do.
So folks rarely line up there. Or they do, within the first hour the store is sold out and off folks go to the Apple store hoping to get lucky