Apple sells 3 million new iPads in 3 days
Just three days after Apple Inc. launched the newest iPad in stores, the company announced it sold 3 million units.
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of global marketing, said it was the strongest iPad release yet.
Analysts had anticipated that the third-generation iPad would be a strong seller — Apple had described pre-orders for the device as “off the charts”— but the general consensus was that Apple would sell 2 million to 3 million units by the end of March.
The iPad, which was available for pre-order starting March 9, was launched in 10 markets Friday: the U.S. (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and Britain.
On Friday, the newest iPad is set to launch in 25 additional markets: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macao, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
“We can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world Friday,” Schiller said in a statement released by Apple.
Separately, research firm IHS ISuppli said in its tear-down analysis that the new iPad costs more to make than the iPad 2.
The 32-gigabyte version of the new iPad with 4G LTE wireless costs $375 to make. That’s about 50% of the tablet’s $729 price tag. The comparable iPad 2 with 3G wireless, when launched last year, cost Apple about 9% less to build, according to IHS. That iteration carried a cost of about $335 for materials and manufacturing.
A higher-resolution screen, battery with longer life and 4G LTE capability are adding to the higher cost, the firm found.
“For the third-generation new iPad, Apple has taken a significant step up in display capabilities and expense, at four times the resolution and 53% more cost,” Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst for IHS’ tear-down services, said in a news release.
The Retina display, the most obvious enhancement on the latest generation of the device — with resolution of 2,048 pixels by 1,536 pixels — is the most expensive single component, at $87, IHS said. The display on earlier iPad models cost Apple $30 less.
And who is getting the bigger slice of the Apple pie? Samsung, again.
Supplying the Retina display and the applications processor gives Samsung a 30.2% share of the parts for the 32-gigabyte LTE iPad, the largest of any supplier, IHS said.
