Over 3 Million New iPads Sold Already

By Alex Angove

Last updated 20 March 2012

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the new iPad is selling at a phenomenal pace with over 3 million units already in the hands of customers since its release late last week. More impressive than that, the numbers represent Apple’s best opening sales for an iPad unit to date.

Despite the same old calls that Apple hadn’t upgraded its hardware enough, or changed the design sufficiently to warrant a new product, the new iPad has once again proven that demand for Apple products is completely without equal in today’s market.

Unlike many tech sites, we were actually very pleased with what we saw when Apple made its original announcement. While we’re definitely not Apple fanboys, we’ve been long-time questioners of the current market’s trend towards boosting CPU power without any appreciable attention falling to other areas. It was almost a breath of fresh air when we heard that Apple had not opted to go down the quad-core CPU route and had instead taken the approach of improving graphics, display, RAM, network-speed and camera.

Despite our recent mention of new manufacturers entering the tablet game via the upcoming Windows 8 (no, not Windows Phone) platform, it still seems that Apple has little to worry about when it comes to competition in the tablet market.

We’re still very keen to see what the next round of quad-core Android tablets will be capable of, not to mention what the new and old Windows 8 tablet manufacturers will be able to offer. After all, a market where one company continues to reign totally supreme risks becoming stagnant.

However, it’s probably more likely that the new Windows 8 tablets will impact Android sales more heavily than those of the iPad. Where Android tablets are really yet to make a reputation for themselves, there are more than a few eagre beavers online who anxiously await the release of Windows 8 slates.

While Android and iOS almost treat their tablets like larger phones, the choice to go with Windows 8 rather than Windows Phone suggest that Microsoft will be approaching its tablets as more-portable PCs, rather than traditionally limited mobile devices. This suggestion has attracted a crowd that has, until now, expressed little interest in the tablet market.

There’s also the chance that Windows 8 may pick up where BlackBerry failed with the PlayBook – the Business Market. But once again that’s an area where Apple is already firmly entrenched.

We’d certainly like to see someone come out with a tablet option that rivals the iPad in popularity and possibly cause Apple to rethink its approach, or at the very least prompt a redesign of the case. But if these sales are any indication it looks like we’ll be seeing another year with the iPad sitting atop the tablet market, almost uncontested in sales and popularity.