iPad Pre-orders Creep to 240K at the End of the Second Week of Sales

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As the April 3rd launch date for the Apple iPad continues to come closer, analysts and everyone in between are number crunching, trying to guess the volume of sales this highly discussed tablet is generating. The most recent estimate was generated on Friday, exactly two weeks after the pre-orders kicked off and predicts that Apple has sold a respectable 240,000 units with 120,000 orders occurring on day one, approximately 12,000 units per day over the first week (excluding the first day) and 7,000 units per day over second week. The estimate comes courtesy of Daniel Tello who is tracking order numbers submitted by those who have purchased an iPad and volunteered to give Tello their order number.

The order numbers obtained by Tello increase sequentially and can be used to calculate the total number of orders submitted between two dates. Tello uses some not-so-fancy mathematics to remove the average number of daily orders which, theoretically, would leave as a remainder only those orders for iPads. He then uses this total number of  iPad orders to calculate the number of iPads purchased by multiplying  his iPad order number by 1.1 which compensates for those who bought two iPads per order.

As impressive as this number sounds, it does not take into account those orders for in-store pickup which according to some estimates may equal or even surpass the number of online orders. Though many future iPad owners may prefer to have their iPad delivered to their doorsteps sometime on Saturday, many more may prefer to hoof it to their local Apple store so they can get thier iPad when the stores open at 9AM. The desire to be the first with an iPad may drive the pre-order estimate to a level twice as high as estimated and that 240K figure may be as high as 500,000 when these in-store orders are rolled into the calculation.

To further bolster the pre-oder figures, it should also be noted that this 500K estimate does not account for iPad orders from businesses and educational systems who, unlike orders from individuals, are not limited to two iPads per order. If companies and school systems could order 10, 50, or even 100 at a time, this estimate of 500K could quickly balloon.  Ultimately, it is only Apple who knows the true sales figures and the Cupertino company is staying characteristically silent on the matter. One thing is for sure, Apple must be enjoying all this buzz the iPad and its sales are generating. Which leads us to our final question, have you pre-ordered your iPad, yet?