Apple’s iPad has grown 150% this year, and can expect a steady growth rate next year too, according to a report.
According to one of the most esteemed market analysts, Horaţiu Dediu from Asymco, Apple has managed to double the amount of handsets sold every year.
On Wednesday, Dediu published his Q2 2012 estimates on Asymco.com and discussed them at some length on The Critical Path, his weekly podcast on Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 Network.
In the run-up to Apple’s first quarterly earnings report, Dediu predicts iPad sales of 12.2m units, a year-on-year growth of 160%.
The report comes just as Apple launched the latest version of its iPad tablet. Analysts claim the firm sold as many as 1m units in its first two days on sale, three times higher than the original iPad.
The last generation iPhone, with its highly praised digital assistant allowed Apple to report a 108% year-over-year growth in 2011.
When it comes to the iPads, the situation is a little more delicate. Apple’s tablets helped definine a new market that is constantly growing. The original iPad sold, in the first days after the release, barely100,000 units. A year later, analysts suggested that Apple sold around 800,000 iPad 2 over the launch weekend.
Now, the company proudly announced 3 million new iPads sold in the first days of availability. With the market expanding that fast, it is very likely that the iPad’s growth rate will be over 150% this year.
The difference between the launch performance of the first iPad and the third, he points out, is a factor 28. Adjusted for the number of countries where each device was launched, that boils down to roughly 3 to 1.
Dediu is calling for Q2 iPad sales of 12.2 million. That’s more than 1.2 million units higher than Wall Street’s current consensus, but it’s hardly the biggest estimate out there. This week, Citigroup’s Richard Gardner and Evercore’s Robert Cihra both issued notes predicting Q2 iPad sales of 13 million.