There have been a bunch of articles recently reprinting the estimation of the RBC analyst who has pointed out that the current run rate of iPads exceeds that of Macs.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious :
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It costs half the price of the cheapest Mac
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It does what most people require of a computer (and then some)
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It comes with a proven, discoverable, touch based UI
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It doesn’t come with any of the baggage of a “traditional” computer
What’s not to like?
I posit that the initial sales came from the usual suspects: the early adopter hyper gadget addicted über geeks, but that as “regular” people have been exposed to the iPad in real life situations, they realize that they’ve been buying computers that are vastly more complicated and overkill for what their real day-to-day computing requirements entail.
It’s also worth noting that the current sales rates are in one (granted, very large) market and that the international sales are just getting ready to start (May 28th here in selected European countries).
The big question will be how are sales doing 6 months and a year from now, but somehow I’m not terribly worried for Apple on this one.