Apple has already sold three million new iPads

Apple has announced that sales of their third-generation iOS tablet have reached three million since Friday, making this Apple’s best iPad launch to date. It was also Apple’s biggest launch ever, encompassing 12 countries/regions. While that’s insane and awesome — and it’s impressive they could meet the demand given past constraints — there’s still a lot of the world that has yet to get in on the action; this Friday, the new iPad goes on sale in Spain, Belgium, Mexico, Italy, Norway, Sweden and another 18 countries.

“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold―the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”

In the US, this morning’s announcement from AT&T previously reported that they had busted sales records of the new iPad on launch day as well. It’ll be interesting to see Verizon’s numbers.
For better or worse, I can’t even imagine other tablet manufacturers coming close to this kind of success in the near or distant future. Here’s the press release.

New iPad Tops Three Million

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple® today announced it has sold three million of its incredible new iPad®, since its launch on Friday, March 16. The new iPad features a stunning new Retina™ display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics, a 5 megapixel iSight® camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video, and still delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life* while remaining amazingly thin and light. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G supports ultrafast 4G LTE networks in the US and Canada, and fast networks around the world including those based on HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA.**
“Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”
“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold―the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”
The new iPad is already available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, UK and the US Virgin Islands and will be available in 24 more countries starting at 8:00 a.m. local time on Friday, March 23 through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
The new iPad Wi-Fi models are available in black or white for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model, $699 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G for either AT&T or Verizon is available for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad is sold in the US through the Apple Online Store (http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2F&esheet=50209105&lan=en-US&anchor=www.apple.com&index=2&md5=19301fdfe5900aee076c95653a3b2a0f), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. Additionally, the incredible iPad 2 is now offered at a more affordable price of $399 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and just $529 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G model.