152,000 iPads Pre-Orders This Weekend; 1m By Mid-April?

One of the side-effects of a big name launch such as the iPad's on Friday is that it brings all the analysts out to make their sales predictions.  We've already heard one guesstimate – 120,000 units on the first day alone – and now there's more speculation from would-be analyst Daniel Tello who has been crunching unofficial Investor Village figures.  He reckons Apple's 25,000-per-hour sales maelstrom on Friday then tailed off to "just" 1,000-per-hour over Saturday and Sunday, culminating in 152,000 pre-orders by midnight Sunday.

"With three weeks and two weekends left before they ship, I wouldn't expect much more than half a million in pre-orders and reservations.  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.  But this is a very speculative guesstimate based on just a weekend of pre-orders" Daniel Tello

Daniel's figures aren't just pie-in-the-sky however; he actually has a strong track record – under his online alter-ego Deagol – for accurately predicting Apple's financial and sales performance.  This time around he worked with an Investor Village analyst to take into account periods where they lacked harder figures.

According to his crunching, the WiFi-only iPad has outsold the WiFi + 3G model by 2:1 (perhaps aided in part because the latter won't ship for a few weeks after the WiFi model) and the 64GB WiFi iPad has 35-percent of sales.  Daniel's figures don't, however, include iPad reservations for pick-up at Apple Stores come April 3rd.