Apple today announced that it has sold its one millionth iPad as of Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.
“One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.
Developers have created over 5,000 new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for the iPhone or iPod touch.
Apple’s 3G iPad, which works with AT&T’s HSPA network as well as WiFi, became available on April 30 in the US for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects overall 2010 iPad sales to reach 4.3 million.
iSupply expects worldwide iPad sales are expected to amount to 7.1 million units in 2010. Sales will double to 14.4 million in 2011 and nearly triple to 20.1 million in 2012.
Meanwhile, Apple is projected to sell 36 million iPhones worldwide in 2010. Piper Jaffray says that total is likely conservative for international sales, and doesn’t include the possibility of expansion to other carriers in the U.S.
The original iPhone reached 1 million units sold on day 74. The iPhone first went on sale, June 29, 2007; Droid, November 5, 2009; and, Nexus One, January 5, 2010.
By 2011, on AT&T alone, Gene Munster, senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray, has forecast 21.3 million iPhone sales in the U.S. He expects the platform to continue its rapid growth, with at least 48.5 million total unit sales next year.
ABI guesses just under 6 billion mobile application will be downloaded in 2010, up from an estimated 2.4 billion in 2009.
Amazon has allegedly sold more than 3 million Kindle readers through the end of 2009. Analysts anticipate slower sales this year, with 2.5 million units expected by the end of 2010. Amazon’s Kindle will soon be sold at Target while the Nook is being sold at Best Buy.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Noble’s Nook has received an update that offers free read-in-store reading functionality as well as a web browser and some Android games.
Digitimes reports that 1.43 million ereaders were sold in Q1 2010, with the Barnes and Noble Nook totaling 53% of e-book readers shipped. Worldwide shipments for 2010 are estimated to reach 11.40 million units, up from 3.82 million in 2009, Digitimes Research added.
Ken Auletta, in the New Yorker, says e-book readers are all about market share.
There are now an estimated three million Kindles in use, and Amazon lists more than four hundred and fifty thousand e-books. If the same book is available in paper and paperless form, Amazon says, forty per cent of its customers order the electronic version. Russ Grandinetti, the Amazon vice-president, says the Kindle has boosted book sales over all. “On average,” he says, Kindle users “buy 3.1 times as many books as they did twelve months ago.”
But publishers also recognize the similarity between Amazon’s strategy and that of iTunes. One publisher said, “Get market share, and when you get far ahead it is hard to catch up. Bezos’s game, like Jobs’s before him, is to get the device and get eighty-to-ninety-per-cent distribution on the device, and you own the game.”
Has Apple won the game? Not yet. Tablets based on Google’s Android OS are expected shortly. They’ll cost half as much and link to the Android Market.
The mobile sector is now a $850 billion global market, comprising 57% of the global telecom market. It is also the fastest growing segment and will comprise 62% of the total telecom market in 2010, according to IDC.
