Ten days ahead of the lines that we expect outside of the Apple store on Regent Street and Covent Garden in London, we have access to the first statistics on the sales of the iPad 2 in the United States. Piper Jaffray, the investment bankers and Deutsche bank, the leading global financial services company are both reported by CNN to have found that authorised retailer sold out their stocks on the first day. Piper Jafrray report sales of between 400,000 and 500,000 iPad 2s in the United States.

The photo below shows queues reported by the Daily Mail last September, of people waiting to buy iPhone 4s “which they can sell for vastly inflated profits to customers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia where the phone is not yet on sale”.

Is this what we should expect with the iPad 2? Here is a picture of 5th Avenue in New York on the 10th March – the launch date of the iPad 2.

Piper Jaffray are reported to have found that 70% of iPad 2 buyers were new to iPad. This is a stark reality when compared to the  23% of of buyers who were new to iPhone 4 on its launch. The same report finds that 65% of the iPad 2 buyers on its launch date already owned an iPhone.

The iPad 2 is clearly the most wanted tablet. Changewave interviewed over 3000 customers in a survey and their research found that 82% of those who planned to buy a tablet wanted the iPad. This is supported by the Piper Jaffray survey mentioned above which found that 78% of people who bought the iPad 2 considered nothing else!

Looking forward to the launch in Europe…