iPad Orders Surge, Then Plummet Over WeekendiPad Orders Surge, Then Plummet Over Weekend

Early estimates say that the number of people who ordered the iPad starting on Friday may have topped 120,000. The pace dropped off sharply over the weekend, though.Analysts are guessing that about 152,000 people pre-ordered the iPad by midnight Sunday night. Most of the pre-orders came in Friday, when Apple first made the iPad available to pre-order. Estimates placed the rate of orders coming in at 25,000 per hour the first few hours. The rate of orders tanked over the weekend, however, to about 1,000 per hour.

Analyst Daniel Tello attributes the rush of orders on Friday to "pure overexcited fanboism." He's probably right.

The iPad doesn't come out for three weeks. That leaves plenty of time for people to order the device. What's unclear is when the cut-off is for delivery by April 3. As of this morning, Apple's Web site still shows that iPad's pre-ordered today will reach customers on Saturday, April 3. Surely there will be a date after which orders will be delayed until the week starting Monday, April 5.

In all, estimates say 120,000 iPads were ordered on Friday alone, and 152,000 in total by Sunday night. Tello doesn't think more than a total of 500,000 will be ordered before 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," he sain in an interview with Fortune. "But this is a very speculative guesstimate based on just a weekend of pre-orders."

Curious to know which iPads are being ordered? Right now, Wi-Fi appears to be edging out the Wi-Fi+3G model at a ratio of two-to-one. About 35% of the iPads being ordered are those with the maximum storage of 64GB.

[Via CNNMoney]