90,000 iPad buyers – in one day?

According to independent estimates reported yesterday, the iPad may have seen as many as ninety thousand pre-orders yesterday on its first day of availability. The term “availability” being relative, of course, because the device won’t actually ship until April 3rd (or later, depending on which model you opt for). There’s been a lot of publicly stated curiosity, by myself and others, about just how popular the iPad will be, seeing as how it’s an ambitious attempt to create a new category of product that’s never really existed in the mainstream before, as opposed to something like the iPhone, which was essentially a combination of two existing types of devices that were already both in widespread use at the time.

So my first reaction to the 90,000 number was “not bad, but not quite up there with some of the pre-order numbers of years past.” For instance, in 1998 the original iMac had a whopping 150,000 pre-orders. Then I caught myself and recalled that those iMac pre-order numbers were an aggregate total over the four months or so that the product was available for pre-order. In contrast, the 90,000 iPads were pre-ordered in one day.

Holy crap.

I’ve said all along that it would be the second wave of buyers, and not the first, that would be a signal of the iPad’s mainstream viability. It’s enough of a gee-whiz product that the first wave go buyers will consist of people who are won over just by the promise of the product and are content to figure out what they’re actually going to do with the thing once they get their hands on it. What that five wave of buyers figures out about the iPad, and the resulting word of mouth, will determine the size of the second wave of buyers, whose primary buying consideration will be what they can accomplish with the product from a practical perspective.

So while yesterday’s estimate doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the iPad’s mainstream viability even if it is correct, it does tell us that the potential ceiling for the device’s popularity might be higher than some had expected. Or to put it another way: while Apple is far from the first company to bring a tablet computer to market, the fact is that roughly 90,003 people bought a tablet computer yesterday, and all but three of them bought theirs from Apple.

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.