Apple just announced over 300,000 iPads were sold during its launch weekend. These sales include pre-orders, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple stores.

This is a very high number if you take into account the iPhone’s launch sales which were 270,000.The iPad outsold the iPhone during launch. And this is magnificent, if you think about it. The iPad is a much more difficult product to market as mainstream consumers are not used to tablet devices at all. The iPhone was refreshing but it was a smartphone and most people had already used smartphones ( e.g. BlackBerry or HTC devices).

iPad users downloaded over one million iPad apps: that is more than 3 apps downloaded per sold device, and over 250,000 ebooks were sold from the Apple iBookstore, close to one book per sold device.

Our predictions were pretty darn close! We predicted 275,000 iPads to be sold in the launch weekend and we missed out by about 25,000 units. Our predictions for iPad sales in the launch weekend were found by averaging prediction figures from four industry analysts: Gene Munster from PiperJaffray, Mike Abramsky from RBC Capital Markets, Brian Marshall from Broadpoint-Amtech and research firm iSupply.

So let’s look at our previously made predictions, cause we seem to be getting quite close to real numbers. We estimated some 2.65 million units in the current quarter (that is from March 2010 to the end of May 2010, or Q2). In the whole of 2010 we expect Apple will sell 8 million iPads. If we extrapolate that number from the rest of 2010 to the whole of 2011, we can expect over 10 million units to be sold next year. Again these are just averages but do give us an indication of what to expect.

The announcement of the iPad included Apple’s own proprietary iBookstore, an application through which users can buy, store and read fiction and non-fiction works. Apple struck deals with Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan and Hachette publishers to fill the store with their book titles. So is this the only way we’re going to read books on our iPad? Not at all!

Here’s a question for you: which platform has the biggest repository of book content in the world, as of now? Google does. With over ten million titles, Google Books is the leader in digital book content now and no competitor has come close this amount.

Google Books is not an e-book store

Google Books has its qualities. It is integrated into Google’s search engine and when our search query matches one of its millions of books, Google shows us the page. However, Google is not leveraging its book platform as a digital e-book store, as you’d expect. It chooses instead to link to online stores where the physical books are sold.

Google’s tense relationship with publishers is one of the reasons for this; Last year, Google settled a court case with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers about its unlimited scanning of books from libraries without any permission from their authors or publishers. Google defended its usage as fair-use under copyright law but as it is a profitable business, the judge was not really going to recognize Google’s defense and a settlement was the result.

The in-court settlement stated that authors and publishers can opt-out of the Google Books program and have their content removed or instead opt-in which means they receive a lump sum for their book (about $40 to $100), a share of the revenue from advertising displayed next to their books and a share of the revenue from optional selling of their books. There you have it: Google says it would like to start selling books soon through Google Checkout and deliver them to customers as standard PDF files. This would mean you could buy and read these books on any mobile device with PDF support, including the iPad. Expected is that Google will develop a more integrated app for the iPad too, like Apple’s iBookstore.

Apple iBookstore vs. Google Books

Will Apple be able to come close to the amount of titles Google has? Possibly, yes. It has done extremely well with a similar concept: its iTunes store; of which the song catalogue now contains over eleven million tracks and which has sold over 10 billion tracks since its launch. Apple’s strategy of actually striking deals with music industry record labels and book publishers at the moment appears to be more effective than Google’s brute-force strategy of just scanning content and having authors and publishers opt-out later. The settlement will make it possible for Google to start selling books but it does not seem to be rushing to do this as I can’t find any title on the Google Books store which I can buy.

Running Google Books on your iPad

Until Google releases its own Books app for the iPad, you can already use a beta version of the service in which publicly licensed books, such as Sherlock Holmes, are available. Running it is as simple as opening up the browser on your iPad and pointing it to http://books.google.com/m.

Have you been using Google Books on your iPhone, iPad or other mobile device? Does it work well for you? How do you expect Google Books and the Apple iBookstore to develop? Can they co-exist on one device? Are they actually very different from each other? Tell me in the comments!

Apple has started its promotion campaign for its much anticipated (and slightly hyped) iPad tablet device with a prime time advert at the Academy Awards Oscars 2010. Over 40 million Americans saw the advert and many more will watch it in replay online. In addition, “Meet the iPad”, as the ad is called, will be run on American television more times in the coming months

The commercial ad features the track “There Goes My Love” by Danish blues-rock band The Blue Van and is 30-seconds long.

The ad shows us how to unlock the device, browse through our photos on iPhoto, read and buy books in the iBookstore, use the browser to read The New York Times, watch movies, use the iCalendar, locate ourselves on Google Maps, physically rotate the device and having the screen move with it, read our email, use iWorks to create documents and presentations and use the on-screen keyboard. It finishes with the iPad’s D-Day: April 3.

A bit surprisingly Apple doesn’t show us what everyone has been talking about in the last few weeks: magazines, and how their digital usability experience might be superior on the iPad. Apple probably feels it’s too early for this, considering there’s not enough magazines out there that will be publishing for the iPad, Apple might not want to create any expectations it cannot fulfill.

Overall, it looks like a good way to quickly stir up some attention for the device with mainstream consumers.

Remember, us techie readers and bloggers know about this device, the mainstream has probably just barely heard about it. They need to be informed, involved and shown why it’s the next big thing in mobile computing for them. Has Apple succeeded in that with this ad? Tell me if you think so in the comments.

With the advent of the web, comic books experienced quite a revitalization after fans started scanning them, posting them up in online comic communities and making them available for everyone to read. To avoid being late for the party as music publishers were with online music sharing, comic publishers like Marvel quickly stepped in and started publishing their comics digitally. Marvel has been selling them through its store Digital Comics since 2007 already.

Your PC display won’t cut it

Just like with e-books, a computer screen just isn’t the most comfortable way to read a comic. Computer displays tire your eyes quickly, especially when you’re reading content. And the fact that you can’t really hold your computer like you would a comic doesn’t help the viewing experience either.

Panelfly on the iPhone

Now the iPhone was mostly meant to be used as phone, a digital communication device and to quickly browse the web. However, data shows that a high proportion of users actually use their iPhone to read e-books, comic books and magazines; and lots of them. Applications like Panelfly make it possible to download, save and read comics on the iPhone with great simplicity. All good, right? Well, that iPhone screens just seems a tad bit too tiny to read a comic on that is supposed to be the size of a Letter or A4 page.

The iPad and comics

Here’s the good news: Panelfly announced they are developing an iPad version of their comic book application. The iPad is perfect read comics on. Just like with your comic book you can walk around, lie down or put it against the wall while you read it. The app will feature an interface matched to the iPad; details are scarce but it seems to be looking really good according to Gizmodo. Panelfly already supports Marvel Comics, so you can buy those with ease. Details on how purchasing comics will happen on the iPad with Panelfly are still unknown.

Apple has remained silent if it will include comic books in the announced iBookstore. Many sources say they won’t, as the iBookstore app just is not optimized for the multimedial experience comics can bring.

The future is dynamic content

Seeing how magazine publishers are already mentioning adding dynamic multimedia objects in their magazines like audio and video, I can only speculate that the same thing might happen to digital comics in the future. What about moving to the next page of your comic and seeing Batman jump in to the page fighting the Riddler for some seconds, then slowing down and changing into a still comic book page again? I can’t wait!

Have you been reading comics on your iPhone or other mobile device? Does it work for you and how do you expect the iPad to change things for comic readers around the world? Tell me in the comments!