Apple's iPad Gets Mixed Street Review
NEW YORK, (
) --
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
shares slip Monday as the company says iPad sales were 300,000 on the first day, slightly below the sales pace some analysts had expected.
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Apple says it sold 300,000 iPads as of midnight Saturday. That number is the grand total that includes pre-order deliveries, store deliveries and retail sales.
"It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world -- it's going to be a game changer," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.
The tablet device debuted Saturday to an enthusiastic Apple-loving crowd, but the question of whether the gadget will appeal to people beyond Apple's core buyers remains unanswered.
Many
observers offered their own weekend sales estimates including Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, who put the number between 600,000 to 700,000 -- double his original target. Munster now expects Apple to sell 5.5 million iPads this year.
Over at Thomas Weisel Partners, Doug Reid saw the iPad as a big contributor to the Apple sales machine.
"Early consumer reviews of iPad have been overwhelmingly positive," Reid writes in a research note Monday. "In the absence of consumer pushback, we are raising our iPad unit estimate" to 6.5 million this year, Reid writes.
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Renaissance Technologies
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SAC Capital
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JPMorgan's Mark Moskowitz was more restrained in his forecast.
"There will be the Apple faithful and the early adopters who support the initial roll-out, but we do not expect a scenario whereby units rise to more than 2 million per quarter in the first generation," Moskowitz wrote in a note Monday.
Moskowitz estimates Apple will sell 4.8 million iPads in the first year.
Apple shares dipped 1.18 or .5% to $234.79 in premarket trading Monday.
--Written by Scott Moritz in New York.