Apple sold over 14 million iPads in 2010

Apple reported sales of  7.3 million iPads in the last quarter of calendar year 2010, corresponding to the company’s first quarter in the 2011 fiscal year.  If you add this number to the 7.5 million iPads the company had sold in the previous two quarters you get an astounding 14.8 million iPads sold in just 9 months.

This number easily exceeds the 13.5 million of the highest analyst predictions for iPad sales in 2010.  Most analysts had been pointing towards 6 to 8 million units sold in 2010, until Apple announced that it had already sold 7.5 million units in the first two quarters of sales.  During this quarter the iPad outpaced the Mac by far in units sold and represented a business of about 4.6 billion dollars for the company.  The Mac represents a larger share of Apple’s revenue as the average sales price for notebooks and desktops is much higher than that of the iPad.

While the Mac sales have been growing continuously for the past 19 quarters, sales of the iPad are growing way faster. It seems clear that iPad derived revenues will exceed those generated by regular computers in 2011.