During today's call on cash dividends, Apple CEO Tim Cook wouldn't divulge any sales figures for the new iPad launch. He did, however, call it a "record weekend." While we still don't have anything quantitative by way of Cupertino, we've spoken with multiple trusted sources who have ballparked some figures from Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue store (aka "the cube").
Here's what we're hearing: within the first 12 hours of the iPad's launch — between 8AM and 8PM local time — the store sold over 13,000 new iPads, an average of about 18 per minute. Daily store revenue, which typically falls between $700,000 to $1 million this quarter, was up to $11.5 million on launch day. On the supply side, the Fifth Avenue store was shipped more iPads than any other store, at least in the US — not surprising at all given its landmark status, but also partly in reaction to last year's iPad 2 launch, where they were selling out faster than employees could open boxes. While we don't have a model-by-model breakdown, we do know the 4G models are selling at a better-than-expected rate, while Wi-Fi models have been more readily available.
We called the store today, which currently has Wi-Fi models available "across the board" and most size / color models available (but not all) for both AT&T and Verizon. This is obviously on the higher end of per-store sales spectrum, as the cube is Apple's most iconic retail location (and also, it should be noted, is open 24 hours a day). We've spoken with sources from other retailers who say that, although their sales figures don't at all match that of Fifth Avenue, the spikes in daily sales were largely similar in scope.