That’s just insane. We’re talking about a run rate of close to 25 iPads per minute being sold. To top this off, I can point to significant anecdotal information in my immediate entourage of people that are planning to buy one, but were just waiting on mine so they could play with it first. :-)
This 2M is not just the early adopter geek crowd, but a much richer and varied consumer base. I’m seeing considerable interest from general consumers that are looking to upgrade or replace their current PC/Mac/Netbook that is used for primarily web surfing and mail.
Key interests expressed outside of the bundled applications:
On the non-geek front, Twitter is a complete non-starter, but there’s interest in low-intensity gaming (Scrabble, Strategery, Pinball HD…)
From the geeks NNW, XBMC Remote HD, Instapaper, Citrix & Wyse PocketCloud are big draws.
Silicon Valley Insider has some interesting numbers that put this into context. Definitely worth reading.
Key takeaway is that outside of the geek set, many people have computers at home for basic internet and communication tasks that they purchased because their simply wasn’t any other viable alternative. Several have proposed the idea of selling their current machine and replacing it with an iPad. I think we’re just at the beginning of something really really big. A key component here is that they don’t want the overhead that comes with a computer which points me to Windows 7 based tablets being considerably less attractive even if they are competitive on tech specs. A safe, reliable, consistent experience has value to the general consumer.
Android remains the wild card in the competition equation.