Apple announced Monday that the company sold more than three million iPads in the first 80 days of product availability. Apple’s trendy new tablet, which has been available for purchase in the United States since the end of March, became available for purchase in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom on May 28.
CEO Steve Jobs said Apple has been “working hard” to get iPads into the hands of even more people around the world, “including those in nine more countries next month.” In response, analysts at Piper Jaffray said they believe the iPad is a long-term investable theme and a reason to buy shares of Apple.
“We also believe investors are underappreciating the global opportunity of the iPad as the ‘Mac for the masses,'” Piper analysts Gene Munster, Michael Olson, and Andrew Murphy wrote in a report released Tuesday. “Given these strong results, we are raising our calendar year 2010 iPad unit estimate from 6.2 million to 7.5 million.”
Not Just About Hardware
Apple’s latest marketing success story isn’t just about the hardware. Earlier this month, Jobs told attendees at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference that five million e-books were downloaded by iPad users in the first 65 days, which he estimated was equivalent to about 22 percent of all e-book sales.
Gartner Research Vice President Allen Weiner noted that this could be an indication that consumers are content with reading e-books on an LCD screen even though it’s harder on the eyes than on dedicated e-paper devices such as the Kindle, nook and Sony Reader.
“The takeaway is that Apple is selling lots of e-books for the iPad,” Weiner wrote in a blog. “This early in the e-reader evolution, perhaps consumers are willing to trade a less-optimal e-reading experience for the added bonus of video,…