iPad Air off to fast start, could be far more successful than iPad 4

By Salvador Rodriguez

Nov. 5, 2013 7:54 AM PT

The iPad Air has gotten off to a fast start, and that could mean that it may be an “iPad Christmas” after all.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made that bold statement during an earnings call late last month, essentially saying the company was expecting large sales from its new iPad, and it seems he may be right.

Mobile app marketing tech firm Fiksu said that apps that use its platform are detecting nearly five times as many iPad Air devices three days after the tablet went on sale as they did when the fourth-generation iPad launched last year.

The iPad Air went on sale Nov. 1, and three days later, it is making up 0.7% of the traffic received by apps that use Fiksu’s technology, which receives traffic from millions of iPad tablets. By comparison, the fourth-generation iPad accounted for only 0.15% of traffic three days after it went on sale last year.

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The new, fifth-generation iPad Air is also outpacing the iPad mini’s 2012 release. Three days after its release, the iPad mini accounted for only 0.21% of iPad traffic.

This could mean large sales of the iPad Air for Apple, said Craig Palli, Fiksu’s chief strategy officer.

These numbers suggest “that Apple hit their audience’s need perfectly,” Palli said. “And as a result of that, you’re seeing a far faster uptake of this device than previous iPads.”

Currently, most iPad traffic on Fiksu’s network comes from the iPad 2, which was released in 2011 and is still sold to this day. The iPad 2 accounts for nearly 38% of Fiksu’s iPad traffic.

But the iPad Air is the first version of the iPad to feature a drastically different design than that of the iPad 2. If Apple can leverage some of its original iPad 2 owners to upgrade to the iPad Air, the company could see great iPad sales numbers.

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