Seventy percent of iPad 2 buyers new to the iPad: Piper Jaffray

If you are wondering why, if you try to order an iPad 2 online, it comes up with a 3-4 week wait, it's because the iPad 2 was essentially sold out in one day, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster and his team. Not only that, 70 percent of the purchases went to new buyers, which has to be bad news to those backing the wave of Android-based tablets coming soon, led by the already released Motorola Xoom.

In terms of new ownership, compare that with the much more mature iPhone, which saw its latest revision, the iPhone 4, have 23 percent of its buyers new to the iPhone at launch. Munster and team surveyed 236 people in the iPad 2 lines in New York City and Minneapolis, MN to come up with their results.

Among the data gleaned was that while wi-fi only models still lead the way, but only slightly. 53 percent purchased wi-fi only, while 47 percent of buyers opted for a 3G model, which costs $130 more per storage tier.

41 percent bought the middle model, the 32GB version, but it's unclear if that was skewed by sell-outs of the 16GB model, which is usually the most popular version.

65 percent of buyers already owned an iPhone, while 24 percent owned a Kindle. In 2010, only 13 percent of iPad 1 buyers had Kindles. It seems that buyers have concluded that a dedicated e-book reader with e-ink is better than the iPad: only 6 percent plan to read with their iPad, which is less than one-third the number (19 percent) in Piper Jaffray's iPad 1 survey.

Munster affirmed his earlier estimate, one that said the iPad 2 would sell 400,000 to 500,000 units in its first weekend, compared to 300,000 for generation iPads in its first weekend in 2010. Other analysts believe Apple could reach 1 million sold in the first weekend.

Wedbush Securities analyst Scott Sutherland told Reuters that "We would not be surprised to see Apple sell closer to 1 million iPad2s in the opening weekend." Meanwhile, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry estimated that Apple may have sold three times more iPad 2s in the first two days compared to the iPad 1. That would also be close to Sutherland's 1 million unit estimate.

Most analysts had projected sales along the lines of Munster, with 350,000 to 400,000 iPads 2 reaching consumers' hands in its debut weekend.

The iPad 2 is really more of an incremental update to the first iPad. It maintains the same screen resolution and size, while adding front- and rear-facing cameras. The rear-facing camera can record 720p video, and the front camera, naturally, supports FaceTime.

It also changes the processor to a dual-core A5 processor (with reportedly double the general processing power and up to 9x better graphics processing), and ups the RAM to 512MB. Apple maintained the price points that the iPad 1 had, but also added something new: a CDMA version of the iPad 2 for Verizon which did not require a MiFi unit.

Via: Fortune, Reuters