No Apple device launch can compare to the in-store debut when a new iPhone goes on sale. That includes the iPad mini: The 7.9-inch iPad, along with a revamped fourth-generation full-size iPad, hit stores in 33 countries countries on Friday morning and was greeted by shorter first-day lines than we’re used to with new Apple devices.
Reports from around the world were rolling in by Friday morning:
- Lines in some major Asian cities were decently long: 100 people reportedly queued up at a store in Tokyo and the same number outside of an Apple Store in Seoul. But at a Hong Kong Apple Store, “staff appeared to outnumber those waiting in line,” Reuters reported.
- In Australia, an early line dwindled within an hour as Apple Store doors opened and customers picked up their new small tablet, CNET Australia noted.
- In London, stacks of barriers used to control crowds were deemed unnecessary for the relatively small turnout at the Covent Garden Apple Store. It was “the smallest [Apple queue] I can remember,” a CNET UK reporter wrote Friday morning.
- I had assumed many people in New York City had more pressing concerns than waiting on line for a new iPad, but plenty of people still turned out. Fortune reported that by about 8 a.m. ET there were already 550 standing in line. But the storm was not without its impact: the Fifth Avenue Apple Store’s opening was delayed two hours so employees could make their way into work via a severely overtaxed local transportation network.
This smaller initial turnout wasn’t completely unexpected. Analysts seemed convinced even before Friday that while sales over the long-term of the device will be good, it wasn’t going to be pandemonium outside Apple Stores as it has been for some past iPhone launches. Some Apple watchers predicted first-weekend sales of the iPad mini would range from 1 million to 1.5 million. That’s a third to half the 3 million new third-generation iPads Apple sold in the launch weekend in March, and only about 20 percent of the first-weekend sales of the iPhone 5, which were 5 million.
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