After pre-selling 120,000 iPads last week, an Venezuelan analyst named Daniel Tello estimated that Apple iPad pre-sales fell to 1,000 per hour on Sunday. Tello believes that the first boost was all about “pure overexcited fanboism” and the demand will fall over the next week.
To put this into perspective, however, I doubt any one Nokia phone sells 1,000 units an hour, let alone an untested, unseen device sold only in the American market. Obviously a lot of these sales can most definitely attributed to carpetbaggers hoping for a quick eBay fix as well as to frothy fanbois, but I assure you, Mr. Tello, that Apple is crying all the way to the bank with their pre-order cash.
While I agree that this thing could end up being another MacBook Air, for some reason I have a good feeling about this device. People have been looking for it, whether they knew it or not. In fact, they’ve been looking for it since about 2001 when the first tablets hit the street and disappointed us.