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Infographic: iPad sales fly way beyond expectations

Ross Dawson, August 17, 2010 at 4:23 pm

Here is the first of a series of infographics we are creating on the iPad and media. It shows the growth in sales of the iPad, including actual sales figures announced by Apple and forecasts by a variety of players for the end of this calendar year.

Click on the image to see at full size

It is interesting to look at the forecasts made before the launch of iPad for September 30 (Apple’s end of financial year). No-one had any idea how successful the iPad has turned out to be. Given continued shortages in the stores, it appears clear that any forecasts for sales this year need will be driven by supply capacity rather than demand.

While some believe these high initial sales are just early adopters and Apple fanboys (and girls), I think the higher range of forecasts for this year and beyond (some as high as 35 million for next year) are likely.

[NOTE:] Our iPad Strategy Workshop on 27 August in Sydney is now at 75 registrations and will almost certainly sell out, so register soon if you want to come!

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http://Www.ilovemyiphone4.com Sarah Miller

Hi Ross, really like the infographics displayed above on iPads. Can we expect more like this?
http://www.rossdawson.com Ross Dawson

Thanks Sarah, yes more coming soon, though focusing on iPad and media next.
JT

It seems to me this graphic would have been a lot more readable if you’d just used regular old bars.
Unless I’m reading this completely wrong or overlooking some bit of extra information, it doesn’t appear to me that the width of the current rectangular measuring blocks have any bearing on the number of iPads sold as the quantity axis is vertical. Making them wider as sales go up only serves to make the graphic harder to read.
The same is true for the predicted/estimated sales. Actually it’s worse because they are all displayed one on top of the other and are no longer tied to the horizontal time axis.
A standard bar chart would have allowed you to keep the predicted sales tied to the time axis as to when the estimates were made and also allowed more direct comparison of actual sales.
Just sayin’,
JH

Perhaps I’ve missed the point – but I’m a little confused by this infographic. Seems the blue actual sales completely missed the green pre-launch forecasts?
http://rossdawsonblog.com Ross Dawson

JT – fair point, but it is nice to occasionally have something which breaks the boredom of bar charts Also using an iPad shape rather than bar helps to distinguish the predictions.
JH – these are dated e.g. actual 3.27m sales by June 26, forecast of 2.9m sales by September 30.
JT

Not trying to argue the point here, but using the iPad shape doesn’t help distinguish the predictions. Because they overlap on top of each other you are forced to make the labels overlap as well. It makes the graphic less readable and more confusing.
Your point about doing something to “break the boredom of bar charts” is well taken, but there’s a reason bar charts are so widely used. They effectively communicate the message better than other kinds of charts 99% of the time.
I’m all for trying something different, but not at the cost of readability/understanding.
I say this with all due respect and really just stumbled on this chart as I saw it in an RSS feed from an infographic blog I follow. It gave me the opportunity to have a look around your blog, and it’s piqued my interest. So now I’ve got another feed I’ll be following.
http://rossdawsonblog.com Ross Dawson

JT – thanks for following!
I accept that trying to make this visually attractive was at the expense of understandability, though I would argue not by too much. Note that I’m not the graphic designer but I like what he did for me here.
http://twitter.com/Arleneuc Arlene Murchinson

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Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.