Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has a made his public educated guess on the number of 3G iPads sold this weekend: 300,00. To obtain these figures, Munster and his team counted the lines outside the flagship Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York as well as a store in a mall outside Minneapolis. The results were then compaired to counts made in those same locations at the launch of the Wi-Fi-only model released a month ago.
Although we will only know with certainty the amount of 3G iPads sold if and when Apple release that information, when called by Munster’s team yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, 49 of 50 Apple stores contacted had sold out of 3G iPads.
Generally speaking, Munster’s estimates tend to be high and you can usually half his guesses to arrive at an accurate figure. When he predicted initial launch figures would be between 600,000 and 700,000, it turned out to be half.
