Apple iPad Sales And The Dawn Of A New Era

Apple sold 90,000 iPad's on the first day as pre-order sales, worth $54 million in sales.   I've been in the tech industry for over 25 years and for me, it was a no brainer that this product was going to be a game changer right from the announcement, despite a tough economy.  These figures were for yesterday sales alone.  There is likely to be a shortage if orders continue at this rate.  Analysts predict first year sales could reach 5 million units.  E-Week projects sales might actually reach 7 million.  It's the dawn of a new era!


And this is just the beginning.  Barnes and Noble has already announced it will make its books available for the iPad format as will Kindle.  The iPad is using the industry standard open source format -  EPUB, thus making available many more books outside of the Apple store.  You can add EPUB to iTunes and synch that way.    


Another great feature is the VoiceOver feature to read screen content aloud.  This feature alone could go a long way to making the iPad a broadly accepted device for reading books, much as the iPod supported generic MP3.  The National Federation of the Blind has praised Apple for its VoiceOver feature.  


Apple is making history yet again, as it did with the iPod and the iPhone. The rest of the industry is clamoring to catch up as Apple has birthed a new category of products.