Ah, analysts. They get paid a lot of money to predict and speculate, and write reports on those predictions and speculations that cost a few thousand dollars. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb has compiled several different analyst reports on iPad sales, and they all look promising.

The numbers range from 1.1 million units sold in the first year, with the most optimistic prediction being 9 million units in the second year.

Here’s what I, a non-analyst (or a non-paid analyst) can tell you : Apple will sell containerloads of the Apple iPad. Apple is very good at selling you what you want, not what you need. Steve Jobs famously said they would sell 10 million iPhones in the first full year, and they did. This was back when the iPhone was a 2G-only, $700 unsubsidised device locked only to the AT&T network.

Even though a lot of people say they can’t see the use-case for an Apple iPad, you just know that once Apple gets these devices into the hands of people, and once these devices start being visible in public, the pull factor will be incredible.

In 3 months, when the 3G versions of the iPad will come out, we’ll have 150,000 apps available in the App Store, and many iPad-specific applications. Expect to see whole industries (logistics, education) adopting the iPad, or something similar to an iPad.

Non-Apple users will not be left out, we have maybe half a dozen different tablet offerings which are out now or will be out soon. This time next year, we’ll look back and wonder how we managed to get by without tablets.

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Filed under: Mobile News

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