iPad Catching On Faster Than the DVD Player

Apple sold 3 million iPads in the first 80 days of its shelf life, and is currently selling about 4.5 million a quarter, making it by far the fastest-adopted piece of technology in history, CNBC reports. Its nearest competitor is the iPhone, and that sold a mere million units in its first quarter. The fastest non-phone device, the DVD player, sold just 350,000 units in its first year on the market.

It took DVD players, which at first seemed a bulky, pricey alternative to VHS machines, five years to hit the sales pace the iPad reached in its first quarter. “By any account, the iPad is a runaway success of unprecedented proportion,” says one retail analyst. At its current rate, the iPad will blow past videogame hardware and cell phones to become the fourth-largest consumer electronics category in the US next year—just below TVs, smart phones, and notebook PCs. For all things iPad, click here.
(More iPad stories.)