Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Place Your iPad Mini Bets

It’s the first day of sales for a new Apple product, so that means lines, coverage of lines*, comparison of today’s lines to other lines, etc.

Also: Sales guesses!

So, how many iPad minis will Apple move this weekend? Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, perhaps the most widely quoted Apple analyst and a longtime Apple bull, predicts up to 1.5 million units.

But if Apple hits Munster’s number, that won’t be nearly enough to please BTIG Research’s Walter Piecyk. He wants to see Tim Cook sell three million minis, because that’s how many iPad 3’s (“New iPads,” in Apple’s parlance) Apple sold during its March debut weekend.

His logic: “We believe 3 million units is an appropriate bogey given that the Mini is being launched in nearly 3x the number of markets than the iPad 3, is at a much lower price point and sold out of pre-ordered product deliverable this weekend.”

If Apple follows form, we’ll get some sort of number in the next few days, likely Monday. Then again, Tim Cook has been deviating from past practices a bit.

*As Nicholas Carlson points out, waiting in line to buy a tech gadget seems awfully weird in the New York area right now.

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