Apple has announced that it has, in the sixty days since the device’s April third release in the US, managed to sell 2 million units of its iPad hardware.
Of course, the fact that Apple has managed to push itself up to the 2 million mark so very quickly very likely has something to do with the fact that the international launch of the device proved so successful. Both Japan and the UK have seen a high level of interest in Apple’s tablet device, so we can probably expect to see more announcements coming from Apple as it passes more milestones with the device.
It’s hard not to feel as though Apple might not be doing quite as well if its iPad had been opposed by a Windows-based tablet. It had initially seemed as though HP’s Slate might end up being that alternative, but after HP’s acquisition of Palm it seems that the company is fully dedicating itself to a push towards a tablet running a mobile OS, an approach more similar to Apple’s own.
Given that Web OS has been so well received, it makes a lot of sense for HP to delay its own tablet offerings until it can offer something comparable to the experience the iPad touts. Indeed, given that the first reviews that had begun to creep out about the Slate had painted a picture of a device that was, essentially, a netbook that happened to have a had a touch-screen interface rather than a keyboard/mouse affair.
Unfortunately for HP, it seems that Apple has been capitalising well on the fact that there aren’t too many big names with tablets available yet. If nothing else, we’ll be curious to see in what form HP’s tablet eventually does launch and just how people respond to the device.
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