Analysts: Apple may have sold between 5-9 million iPads in Q2

These numbers are really a story of its own.
First there were some rumours that Apple would delay iPad2 to the summer due to production constraints. Suddenly the iPad is announced and made available in one week. Everybody seems happy. Until they discover that there are no pre-orders, and the stores only sell them after 5pm (first time for Apple?)

The result is natural. A Apple Online, shipping estimated times rise up to 4-5 weeks in one day. Now I wonder. Because Apple sold 5 million iPads (assuming that such strong demand would mean 1M sales/week) or the number of iPads produced is really really low?

Then the second surprise, international launch of iPad2 happens in 24 (!!!) countries 2 weeks later. This time Apple Store online started with shipping time of 2/3 weeks (more millions??) and within the day, all the countries had their iPad2 stock sold.

In Portugal, we don't have Apple Stores, but the stores that were supposed to sell them either got 20 units or none. No iPad2 was sold without a 3 week prior to launch reservation.

Of course that the launch dates for the iPad were not innocent. On March 11 they could launch it before Xoom & Others. On the 25th they smashed the 3DS (did anyone noticed that the new Nintendo console was available at the same day???)

To me this means that Apple for the first time was not ready to a launch like this. They have sold very few units (compared to the millions that the analysts are predicting). I'm sure that if they could, they would have come forward to announce that the iPad has already sold x Million units while the Xoom has not, etc.

I fear that sooner or later (if Apple keep secrecy about the numbers) we will know what is really happening

Apple is clearly padding the sales figures for this quarter. They are booking orders as sales, and, because supply is limited thanks to events in Japan constraining available components, they are pushing what product they do have through third parties like Radio Shack, so they can book that channel stuffing as sales.

Funny how the online orders have a delivery time of 3-4 weeks, so that pushes the delivery into next quarter, so if it needs to be cancelled through ongoing component shortages, it comes out of next quarter's figures, not this one.

Apple will sell and derive more revenue from Smart Covers than all of the Android tablets combined.

Michael,

The analysts' estimates you bring up are total iPad sales for the quarter (iPad and iPad 2), not iPad 2 only.

Cheers!

And yet not one of them belongs to me yet :( .