iPad Sales Drop Significantly

**PowerMan57two** · March 15th, 2010, 02:51 PM

A rough three-day estimate, based on an analysis of order numbers: 152,000 units

Source: Daniel Tello
After the initial burst of excitement on Friday that saw iPad pre-orders coming in at the rate of 25,000 per hour, there was a dramatic fall-off over the weekend.

According to Daniel Tello, the Venezuelan blogger-analyst who has been tracking order numbers submitted by volunteers at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board, orders on Saturday and Sunday slowed to an estimated 1,000 per hour.

Tello, who is better known on the Web as Deagol (after a Hobbit in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), attributes roughly half of the estimated 120,000 first-day sales to "pure overexcited fanboism."

The real demand for Apple's (AAPL) tablet computer in the weeks before its April 3 release, he says, is probably closer to 30,000 per weekday and half that on weekends.

"With three weeks and two weekends left before they ship, I wouldn't expect much more than half a million in pre-orders and reservations," he says.

"My best guess, although very tentative given the early stage and few data we have so far, would be that they hit the 1 million unit milestone by the second week after it ships," he told Fortune. "But this is a very speculative guesstimate based on just a weekend of pre-orders."

Tello's estimates are based on 120 orders for 137 iPads over 58 hours, starting at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday.

Working with Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group, he applied a complex formula that subtracts the average number of non-iPad orders on Apple's online site (assuming a slight bump due to increased traffic), multiplies the result by an average of 1.125 iPads per order and adds an estimated 2,000 units for the eight late-night hours for which they had no data.

Tello's bottom line estimate: 152,000 pre-orders by midnight Sunday. This does not include iPads reserved for pick-up.

The breakdown of orders by flash drive capacity (16, 32 or 64GB) and network (Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi+3G) remains roughly where it was on Friday (see pie charts here), with buyers favoring Wi-Fi over Wi-Fi+3G by more than 2 to 1. There was a slight increase over the weekend in 64GB orders, pushing its share of the pie to more than 35%.

Tello and Castroll hope to continue their analysis, but they are running out of volunteers willing to submit their order numbers. If you pre-order an iPad between now and April 3 and would like to contribute to their effort, send the information to [email protected]. Include your order number with the last three digits Xed out, the number of iPads you ordered, the order time, time zone, memory capacity and whether your iPad is Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + 3G.

Tello is famous in Apple investor circles for making predictions of the company's quarterly revenues and earnings that are as good as, and more often better, than those published by professional analysts. See, for example, How the analysts got it so wrong. You can follow his work at Deagol's AAPL Model.

Source: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune....n=yes&hpt=Sbin

Comments?

Personally, I don't like Apple. The only product I like of theirs is the iPhone. Other than that though I'm just not a fan. I kind of think it will be funny if the iPad fails because it got all this hype and then all of a sudden they pull the plug or something! ROFL!

**drtoker** · March 15th, 2010, 02:54 PM

Well if you like the iPhone, this isn't much different. Its just a bigger iPhone without the phone...

Anywho, I would totally buy one, if it were like $150, which will never happen, since I loved the idea of the iPhone, but couldn't afford the data plan to go with it...

**PowerMan57two** · March 15th, 2010, 02:59 PM

True, I see your point. I just don't see the point in paying all this extra money for an iPhone on steroids when I already have the phone.

I like the phone because it's "smooth" for a phone. Works great. My e-mail notifier goes off the instant I get an e-mail, browsing, texting, etc are a breeze. However, I would never use it as a computer replacement because it does lack so many things. Having the iPad you would think they want to add these featurs in such as flash support so it gives me an incentive to go buy it because my iPhone doesn't support it. However, the iPad is the same thing as the iPhone practically. I will stop ranting on.. I guess I just don't see the point.

**mountain_rage** · March 15th, 2010, 04:58 PM

The Ipad is a bad idea, and only suckers are buying them imo. If it did everything well, than maybe it would be worth it. But it is a subpar eReader, subpar internet browser, not all that portable, underpowered to be a computer and your locked to an app store. For the price you may as well buy a laptop, or an hp tablet which gives you far more options.

**moneoa** · March 15th, 2010, 05:29 PM

Originally Posted by mountain_rage

The Ipad is a bad idea, and only suckers are buying them imo. If it did everything well, than maybe it would be worth it. But it is a subpar eReader, subpar internet browser, not all that portable, underpowered to be a computer and your locked to an app store. For the price you may as well buy a laptop, or an hp tablet which gives you far more options.

it is about the same size as a kindle or ebook and you see people carrying those rediculous things all the time, people said the Iphone was going to ditch hard also but Steve is a smart guy and knows it is not about what is more powerful or cheaper it is the marketing and the developed cool factor.

**mountain_rage** · March 15th, 2010, 06:06 PM

Originally Posted by moneoa

it is about the same size as a kindle or ebook and you see people carrying those rediculous things all the time, people said the Iphone was going to ditch hard also but Steve is a smart guy and knows it is not about what is more powerful or cheaper it is the marketing and the developed cool factor.

Ya but eBooks don't use an lcd screen, which is what is nice about the Kindle or Sony eReader, the eink screens is the only legitimate reason to own one. The Ipad is just a gimped tablet. Suckers will still buy one, but I'm sure it won't be a huge success.

To contrast that to the mp3 player, the only people that thought mp3 players would tank were those that did not know what they were, and the record industry that was trying to kill them off through lawsuits. Anyone with half a brain knew it was a cool product, hell everyone that was a bit tech savy drooled over having some of the first hard drive based units, such as the Creative Nomad.