Apple Quantifies Their iPad “Record Weekend”: 3 Million Sold In 3 Days

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... ? Learn More

Earlier today, AT&T announced record sales and activation numbers for the new iPad. During the Apple dividend/buyback call, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke of a “record weekend” for the new iPad. Unfortunately, neither had actual numbers to share. And that was odd since normally when Apple has a new record number to crow about, crow they do. This was more of an Amazon maneuver where “records” are set by products selling 4x of another unstated number.
Turns out Tim Cook just didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Apple has just issued a release with their actual sales numbers for the first weekend of the new iPad. And the numbers are big. Very big. Three million iPads sold in the first three days big.
So how does that stack up to the previous versions of the iPad? Well, Apple didn’t officially announce first weekend sales for the iPad 2, likely because they were very constrained. Analyst estimates pegged the number sold somewhere between 500,000 to somewhere just north of 1 million. So even using the bullish numbers, this iPad launch was roughly 3x as large as the launch last year.
Two years ago, Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of sales. Again, the pace here seems to be about 3x that. For comparisons sake, Apple sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S in its first weekend late last year.
Our full review of the new iPad.
Over the weekend, a few analysts were jumping over one another to be the first to predict timid sales of the new iPad. Those analysts, once again, now look like huge assclowns.
The quote part of the release below:

“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold?the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”

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Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...
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