Who bought the other 999,998 iPads

Apple announced Friday that it had sold 1 million iPads.  I bought 2 - so that leaves 999,998 to be accounted for.  My son in law got one from Disney - which brings us down to 999,997.  The initial estimates on the sales of 3G were about 300,000 units.  That means the iPad sold in 28 days what the original iPhone took 74 days to sell.  (Or what the Zune may sell to in the next couple of years - actually the Zune had a bit more than 5 million units sold at three and a half years.)

What surprises me about the numbers is how the device is being purchased.  Traditionally it has been a rule of thumb that when a device like this comes out buyers purchase the largest size.  But in the sales numbers I have seen the vast majority of 3G buyers are getting the 16 gig model.  That means the first buyers see this as a content consuming device (light email, books, movies, web surfing).  My suspicion is that as buyers get a chance to use it - it will evolve into something a lot more.  I have not seen the number of sales on the iWork aps but that might be an indicator of how fast the evolution occurs.