Beginning sales for the new iPad2 are predicted to be higher than the first iPad, but since there are many new places being added to where it is being sold, the lines aren’t expected to be that bad.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said on Tuesday that the first iPad debuted at 221 U.S. Apple retail stores and the majority of Best Buy’s about 1,100 American stores and that the iPad 2 will launch at much more places, and is expected to be available more than 10,000 retail partner stores, as well as 236 current Apple retail stores.
The iPad2 will also be sold in the U.S. on Friday at the following places: Walmart, Target, AT&T and Verizon stores. Munster is convinced it will sell more units than the first iPad, which sold a million units in only 28 days.
Munster said that usually the length of the lines on the first day of sales shows how much of a demand there is, but with this launch things like ordering online, pre-orders, international launches at the same time, weather, the time of day and the day of the week, all play a factor and could affect if a potential buyer wants to stand in line. This may not mean they don’t want to buy it.
Apple’s expects both the debut and the expansion of the iPad2 to be quicker than the first iPad. For example, both the Wi-Fi only and the 3G capable models are going to be sold the same day, while with the first IPad, customers had to wait a month for the 3G version.
Expanding it overseas is also going faster, as Apple expects to make it available in 27 countries during the first 14 days, while it took a month when the first iPad was released last year.
Munster believes that Apple will sell about 5.5 million of the new iPads during its first quarter, which would be much more than the 3.27 million that they sold in that same time slot last year. He added that he also believes the iPad2 sales will go up to 5.6 million in the first full quarter of when it becomes available. The 4th quarter last year saw 4.19 millions of the first iPad sold last year.
