Supplies were low? Hardly!
What I don't get about this is every time I went by the local best buy they had hundreds of the things stacked up behind the counter in the computer area. Even on launch day - around noon I was able to just walk in and I could have bought one if I wanted - I even have photo proof of this.
Something doesn't ad up if you ask me.
No.. they were all sold units.
Try looking at it in a slightly different way.. The inconvenient not believing PR releases way.
Apple said 1 million units sold. And I'm sure they were telling the truth. As far as it goes.
They didn't really emphasise very strongly that they were "sold" to retailers and Apple stores. And the iFanboys took it from there. Just like the "Apple biggest phone maker in US" story a few days ago, or "iPad killing netbooks" story yesterday.
Which means all the iPads you saw on display, and the many more in the warehouse were all counted by Apple, as sold. Even though anybody could go in and buy them from Best Buy.
So more accurately... 1 million units shipped to retail outlets.
Not 1 million purchased by members of the public. Six months from now, the same units in that million could still be sitting on a shelf in some store.
Running out of stock from Apple's end is easily done. Ship any surplus units to some low performing out of the way Apple store, delay the worldwide launch, or announce it too early, and not have a a hope of meeting it. And get more PR. Easy. Zero sales lost due to underestimating demand. Plenty of stock to go around shipped from Apple stores to the various outlets.. Job done.
Microsoft quotes shipped figures as sold to retail licenses too, when it includes every copy in every shop, every bulk buy from OEMs. Every free upgrades from Vista, every shipped by default copy that gets erased and replaced with the company image. And naturally.. All the copies that get sent to volume license customers that are still using XP, and will for a year or two more.
It's an old trick that keeps getting swallowed by the fanboys, and regurgitated over and over.