When Apple's CEO Steve Jobs first unveiled the company's long-awaited and much-hyped tablet device, the tech community as a whole remained somewhat unimpressed. It wasn't quite clear what everybody was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't the iPad, which ended up causing weeks of arguments and disappointment. Perhaps it was all the rumors which set everybody up for a let-down, as they got rather extreme to say the least, but either way, the initial wow factor simply wasn't there. Whilst a large number of technology enthusiasts continue to let everybody else know about their hatred for the device (as seems to be the trend with anything Apple), the iPad pre-orders that were opened up earlier today indicate that the device might not be such a dud after all.
According to Mashable, a group of people over at the AAPL Sanity board have done the math and come up with an estimate of the iPad pre-order sales today, based on order numbers (which are listed sequentially). What that means is the numbers are in no way accurate, though the estimates have taken other Apple Store orders into account, and have been made from various sources. Victor Castroll, an analyst with the Valcent Financial Group, backed the estimation, and suggested that there have so far been 90,000 pre-orders in the time that has passed since the iPad was made available, with 50,000 in the first two hours, which doesn't include reservations made at local Apple Stores as no order numbers are given.
It'll be interesting to know how well the device really does coming up to launch, as customers aren't charged until an order ships, and there's still a couple of weeks left before the iPad ships. Perhaps sales are genuinely as good as many are saying, though there's really no way to find out for sure. Jobs is usually happy to share sales details when one of Apple's events is held, so we'll be able to get a bit of insight then, whenever that may be.
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