iPad Orders Drop Dramatically Over Weekend

Posted 03/15/2010 at 6:00pm | by Pulkit Chandna

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As if there was a dearth of excuses to further divide an already compartmentalized planet of ours, the iPad has driven another wedge between Apple loyalists and the rest of the world. The iPad is arguably yet another milestone in the art of hyping products, if not a groundbreaking product. But the hype just might be on the wane. According to a self-styled Apple analyst from Venezuela, pre-orders for the iPad declined drastically over the weekend.

Daniel Tello (aka, Deagol)  has an uncanny knack of making accurate financial predictions when it comes to Apple. Earlier, Deagol and some other members of the Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board had estimated that the number of of pre-orders on Friday – the day Apple began accepting them – was around 120,000, with an initial rate of around 25,000 orders per hour. Now, Deagol's latest estimates show that the rate has slowed down to 1,000 per hour. He expects Apple to receive approximately half a million pre-orders for the iPad in the lead up to its launch on April 3.

"My best guess, although very tentative given the early stage and few data we have so far, would be that they hit the 1 million unit milestone by the second week after it ships," Deagol told Fortune. "But this is a very speculative guesstimate based on just a weekend of pre-orders." All said, Deagol's formula may or may not be right this time.

Image Credit: Deagol