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 highly-anticipated iPad tablet computer by Apple has hit US retail stores today! A worldwide release in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. is scheduled for late April.

You will have to wait to catch the 3G-enabled iPads, they will become available in late April with an AT&T data subscription included. The WiFi-enabled iPads will already be sold in from April 3 on.

On the iPad….

To learn more about what all the fuss is about and what is inside the machine, check out the Apple iPad specifications or watch some videos.  The iPad has the potential change the way we consume content and for more on that check out our content revolution articles.

Pricing in US and Europe

Pricing will be $499, $599 or $699 for the WiFi-enabled iPads with respectively 16Gb, 32Gb or 64Gb of storage. For the 3G-enabled iPads the prices are $629, $729 or $829 with respectively 16Gb, 32Gb or 64Gb of storage. Based on previous pricing of the iPhone, iPod and MacBooks in Europe, the iPad is estimated to be priced at € 460, € 560, € 650. The US dollar to Euro exchange rate does not really apply here; Apple usually sets its prices different from exchange rates due to the differences in markets.

Current predictions estimate Apple will sell 1.2 million iPads until the end of 2010. Next year, sales are estimated at 3.5 million. These amounts are significantly lower than iPhone sales, and they are for a reason. Apple expects consumers needs to adapt and get used to the concept of a tablet device just like they did with the iPhone. This process will take a few years.

Will the sales predictions become true? Will the Apple iPad be a success or not? And why? Can we expect queues like we did with the iPhone in front of the Apple stores? I want to know what you think! Tell me in the comments!