The iPad has been on sale for almost ten hours, which means it’s high time we had some mildly made up preorder sales numbers around here.
Andrew Erlichson, the CEO of Phanfare, a photosharing website, has an estimate.
We just bought two iPads, about 30 minutes apart. Our order IDs are 10,000 apart. Assuming those order IDs are sequential, and they appear to be, then Apple is selling 20,000 iPads per hour.
Erlichson did mention that he only assumed that order numbers are sequential, and that the numbers are shared over all Apple products bought. Apple wasn’t just selling iPads this morning. However, his estimate has been borne out by the forum denizens of Investor Village, who have been entering all of their order IDs and purchase times on a spreadsheet. They recorded 51,000 orders in 2 hours, after adjusting for the average of 15,000 orders that Apple takes on a normal day.
On the qualitative front, MacRumors reports that a number of iPad customers who have tried to switch their preorders from delivery to in-store pickup have been warned by Apple reps that demand for the iPad has been “‘so overwhelming’ that new iPad orders may not be available for in-store pickup on April 3.”
(via Brainstorm Tech and Silicon Alley Insider.)
