Over 25,000 iPads in Wyoming!
So, Chitika Labs has a relatively scientific way to track iPads sales by looking across their ad network looking for iPads that are browsing the network. Pretty good idea, and it seems fairly reasonable to me. As of this time, they are tracking North of 850,000 iPads out there in the wild with an uptick of about 1 every 3 seconds (if that rate keeps up, that represents about 10M iPads per year). Interestingly, they also have some information related to usage by state (thus my quick calculation of 25,000 iPads in Wyoming).
Now, I’m not trying to continue throwing cold water on Apple, and this is now my third posting on the iPad, but I think that these preliminary numbers continue to reinforce my estimate of about 4.5M iPads that I think will ultimately be sold. I think that the strong out of the gate “fanboi” buyers boosted the original population, and I suspect that update will slow down quite a bit. When the 3G versions come out, there will certainly be another major uptick, but I don’t expect that to be huge.
Anecdotally, I’m hearing a lot of great things about the iPad, and I’m even hearing about “notebook” replacements, but I don’t think that is realistic. It’s a good device for simple email, browsing and viewing Microsoft Office documents. But the more advanced capabilities of a laptop is still essential.
