Dissecting the Numbers

People are guessing at what the pre-sales are for the iPad, and coming to different conclusions from the same guesses.

Over at AppleInsider, their article frames the order numbers as falling: excitement is estimated to have dropped considerably on days two and three and that no more than a half-million preorders and reservations will be taken before the April 3 launch.

Over at Engadget, they look at the same numbers (taken from Daniel Tello) and come up with: For those keeping track, it took the original iPhone 74 days to hit 1 million. Quite an accomplishment if these numbers pan out (and that's a big if!)

So from the same numbers, and two different articles, you could infer that either things are going quite well, or not that well.

Note that it appears these numbers are based on actual pre-orders, and not on reservations.