The new iPads, the iPad mini and the iPad fourth-generation, have sold extremely well over their debut weekend according to Apple. The Cupertino, Ca. based tech company issued a press release a few hours ago heralding the sales figures as “double the previous first weekend milestone of 1.5 million” of the iPad third generation in March this year. Three million of the new iPads were sold over the three days; Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The figures are extremely good considering the earlier media reports of disappointing levels of frenzy outside Apple stores such as “iPad mini launch sees mini queues” on ComputerWorld and “This time even the queues are mini” in The Daily Mail. Apple must be even more pleased that the sales weren’t mini in the face of this kind of negative gloating.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO said “Customers around the world love the new iPad mini and fourth generation iPad. We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis. We're working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.” The new iPads were available in 34 countries over the weekend including the UK, US, France, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan. Later this year many more territories will get the new iPads including China when we can expect another significant sales figure bump. Also iPad minis with cellular data ability are going to be made available in a few weeks time.
Unfortunately for nosey parkers Apple didn’t break down the three million figure into sales for each kind of new iPad. An analyst speaking to CNBC estimated that “about 2.5 million sold were minis, blowing past his prediction of 1.5 million for the launch weekend”. Twitterers noted that many places only had the most expensive 64GB iPad minis left in stock. CNBC also suggested that while the margins on the iPad mini are relatively low for Apple it could sell a great many over the holiday period and outperform analyst expectations.
