Why Apple will sell ten million iPads in 2010

When Apple sold its first million iPads in under a month, we predicted that the company would manage to push ten million units by the end of 2010. Although that would require picking up the pace, the iPad 3G and international launch combined with the word of mouth leading to sales acceleration and finally the 2010 holiday season, would boost sales to ten million by the end of December. The argument against such a feat, at the time at least, was that the swiftness with which the first million were sold was a result of the initial early adopter push and wouldn’t hold up over time. Now that we’ve learned that the second month saw an equal number of sales, however, any prediction of slowing iPad sales goes out the window. In fact, once one factors in the fact that not everyone who’s sought out to buy an iPad this month has been able to do so due to inventory issues, combined with the fact that the international rollout happened with just a few days left in the second month and didn’t significantly factor into that second million in sales, there’s every reason to believe that the current baseline of one million iPads sold per month should increase to 1.5 or two million per month as 2010 goes on. That math says that Apple gets to issue a press release announcing that the ten millionth iPad has found a home, right around December 27th. Right or wrong, you heard it here first; we said it a month ago.