Predicting the potential customer base for your application is not that easy. It has become clear that especially the iPad has become a moving target that should be taken seriously. Latest sales numbers are proof that it is worth your while to make sure that you app runs well on both the iPhone and the iPad. 
Apple said that 3 million iPads have been sold in 80 days. That works out to about 37,500 iPads every day. While this number is impressive, Apple’s numbers also suggest that iPad sales are climbing beyond the initial sales volume right after launch. As far as we know, it took Apple 28 days to sell the first million of iPads. It took about (we don’t know the exact count) 30 days to sell the second million and apparently about 22 days for the third million.
There was some speculation that overall sales could die down, but it seems that international demand is actually accelerating the demand. There have been some colorful comparisons, as Apple highlighted the “80 days” mark and mentioned that Apple will be making the iPad available to more people around the world. So Apple sold 3 million iPads in the same time Phileas Fogg traveled around the world in Jules Verne’s 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. But in case you are wondering, of course, the iPads solds would not be able to make it “around the world.” If placed end-to end, the line of iPads would stretch for about 452 miles. Apple will have to sell 165,067,381 iPads to make it once around the globe.
Not surprisingly, Apple’s new estimate has brought updated sales estimates from analysts, which have been somewhere between 5 and 7 million for this year, with the exception of Forrester, which was, as far as we know, the only research firm that indicated a slowdown of iPad sales, as they believe 3.5 million tablets (including the iPad) will be sold this year. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster now believes that Apple will sell 7.5 million iPads in 2010, up from a previous estimate of 6.2 million. By the end of 2011, Apple will have sold 16.5 million iPads, Munster said in a research note to his clients.
Given the fact that the sales estimates that most analysts covering the iPad have revised their estimates at least half a dozen times this year already, I wonder where we really will end up by the end of the year?