Another big week for Apple’s (AAPL) eight-month-old tablet, as the company launched the iPad in a number of new countries, including Taiwan and South Korea.
The iPad is also showing up in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, according to 9to5mac.com, as well as in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.
Meanwhile, at home, November 29 was Cyber Monday, another big sale day for electronics in the run-up to the holidays. If it was anything like Black Friday last week, Steve Jobs is smiling.
Forbes reported that Apple Stores across the country moved about 8.8 iPads per hour in a single day Friday — about 25,000 if you do the math. If we figure each of those iPads was at least $499, the current price of the cheapest unit, that’s a single day revenue for Apple of a minimum of $12.475 million, just taken in by U.S. Apple Stores, just on Friday, just for the iPad.
Obviously, any rumors that Apple is working on a thinner, carrier-neutral iPad 2 to be released next year aren’t deterring holiday shoppers as they clamor for iPads. Not that that’s surprising — as Forbes mentioned in its Black Friday story — industry analyst firm Piper Jaffray expects more than 5.5 million iPads to be sold just this quarter alone.
It’ll be interesting to see how many iPads got moved on Black Friday (and throughout the holiday season) at stores that aren’t owned by Apple. The company recently opened up the iPad floodgates and started handing them out to just about any retailer that would take them. Big guns like BestBuy (BBY), Target (TGT), Wal-Mart (WMT) and Amazon.com (AMZN) all carry the iPad now, but it’s even in smaller markets, such as AT&T (T) stores, and relatively weirder places, like Verizon (VZ) stores .
Basically, there are iPads available just about everywhere, and if the sales at Apple Stores are any indication, they’re being snapped up with all the veracity everyone expected.
Publishers want some iPad action, too
With all those people buying units, it’s a small wonder that content producers seem to be looking to the iPad with expectations of big things. This morning, Virgin Group (VMED) head Sir Richard Branson launched his iPad-only entertainment and culture magazine, Project, to much media attention. The magazine app itself is free, but each issue of the monthly magazine will run iPad owners $2.99.
Also getting in on the iPad-only subscription publication market is Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corp, (NWS) the owner of Fox News. Rumor has it, News Corp will launch an iPad newspaper as soon as December 9, and that the publication will charge readers about a dollar a week to read.
For those keeping score, that’s two huge media companies banking on the iPad — so much so that their newest publications won’t appear on another medium (at least right now). Maybe Steve Jobs isn’t the only one looking at the iPad holiday numbers and smiling.
UPDATE: Reports: Google spending $5-$6 billion, not $2.5, on Groupon
There’s nothing concrete just yet, but numerous outlets are reporting today that the sale of Groupon to Google (GOOG) isn’t going through at the previously mentioned $2.5 billion, but as high as $6 billion.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Google hasn’t confirmed anything yet — “We don’t comment on rumors,” the company has said — and Groupon is totally mum on the whole thing. Still, with the New York Times reporting on the sale, it seems at least something is going on.
