“Since the iPad became available for pre-order last Friday, Apple has sold hundreds of thousands of the device, say people familiar with the matter,” Yukari Iwatani Kane and Sam Schechner report for The Wall Street Journal. “One of these people said Apple could sell more iPads in its first three months than it sold iPhones in the three months after the smart phone’s debut.”

“The company is still negotiating with media companies for a price cut on TV shows that people can download onto the device, said people familiar with the matter,” Kane and Schechner report.

Kane and Schechner report that “nailing down the content has proven difficult as some potential collaborators weigh the advantages of working with Apple against the potential threats to their current sources of revenue, these people add… The last-minute discussions show the complexities that Apple and Chief Executive Steve Jobs are facing in creating a networked multimedia device, which has pushed the company to pare back some of its initial intentions for the iPad’s release.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“After an initial flood of pent-up demand and some ups and downs over the first weekend, pre-orders for the iPad tablet computer are now averaging 10,000 per day, according to Daniel Tello, a Venezuelan blogger-analyst who writes about Apple using the pseudonym Deagol,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “‘I think sometime during Friday, perhaps before noon, the counter should roll to 200,000 units pre-ordered,’ he told Fortune.

“Tello’s tally does not include iPads reserved for pick-up at Apple retail stores on April 3, the day the device goes on sale,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “But according to the Boy Genius Report — citing its ‘Apple connects’ — Apple’s 222 U.S. stores took an average of 700 reservations that first weekend, which would suggest that reservations and online orders are coming at roughly the same rate.”

Elmer-DeWitt reports, “If true, the total number of iPads reserved or pre-ordered in the first week may be close to 400,000.”

Full article here.

“Judging from the order numbers, pre-sales are coming in at the rate of 25,000 per hour,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt blogs for Fortune.

“The folks who hang out at Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity Board are too impatient to wait for Appl to announce sales figures; they much prefer to work them out on their own — in real time,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.

“Entering the order numbers associated with their own purchases on a Google spreadsheet, they think they’ve cracked the code. As of 11:05 a.m. ET — two and a half hours after Apple’s online store began taking pre-orders — the group had received 15 confirmations with order numbers as high as 74,000 (the numbers don’t necessarily start at 0),” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “‘51,000 orders in two hours,’ announced Victor Castroll shortly after noon. He’s an analyst with Valcent Financial Group and an AAPL Sanity member.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“The Apple iPad has been available for pre-order for more than 24 hours now. Initial demand seems promising, although not everyone has embraced the concept of dedicating $500 or more to be an early adopter of a device that nobody really has all the details on just yet,” Tony Bradley writes for PCWorld.

“Not to sound like a broken record, but the iPad is a consumer device. Actually, as far as I am concerned anything with an Apple logo is–by default–intended primarily for a consumer audience,” Bradley writes. “Despite the passionate zeal of the Apple faithful, you won’t see any Fortune 500 companies lining up to dump Windows-based PC’s for Macs, or BlackBerry smart phones for iPhones any time soon.”

Bradley continues, “That said, the iPad–and other Apple devices–can be more than functional business tools as well. The following is a selection of apps that business professionals can use to transform the media-consuming toy into a productive business tool:”

• Salesforce Mobile
• Meebo
• Freshbooks

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“iPad apps are understandably in their infancy, but with the Apple iPad SDK already in developers’ hands they’ll soon be out in full force,” Michael Sawh reports for T3. “To fill the void, Apple has made the popular move of making the majority of the 140,000 iPhone apps from the App Store available to use on the iPad.”

Sawh reports, “We’ve picked out the iPhone apps that’ll make the most of their new tablet surroundings, selecting our favourites to make the smooth transition from iPhone to iPad.”

1. Skype
2. Photoshop
3. Time Crisis Strike
4. Sky Mobile TV (UK App Store, not available in US)
5. Asphalt 5
6. Gun Smoke
7. The Guardian
8. Tweetdeck
9. Playboy
10. iPlayerlist

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Apple today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April. Beginning a week from today, March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

Apple tonight debuted the company’s first iPad commercial during Academy Awards broadcast.

Direct link via YouTube here.