The adoption rate of the iPad comfortably surpassed the previous record holder, the DVD player, says Bernstein Research in a note to investors. It found that the Apple tablet is selling at a rate of 4.5 million units per quarter compared with just 350,000 DVD players in its first year of release. Some 3 million iPads were sold over the first 80 days.

The adoption rate is even higher than the iPhone, which sold a million units in its first quarter, the research found. The iPad is due to capture around $12 billion in global sales for the year, according to the firm’s retail analyst Colin McGranahan, who is also bullishly predicting sales of almost $20 billion next year, with around $9 billion in the US alone.

That would make the iPad the fourth largest consumer electronics product after television sets, smartphones and laptops. "The iPad did not seem destined to be a runaway product success straight out of the box ... by any account, the iPad is a runaway success of unprecedented proportion," McGranahan said.

The British Register notes, though, that Bernstein Research’s data are limited to the US market and based on conjectures of iPad sales in Best Buy. It also noted that DVD prices dropped significantly a short time later while Apple does not lower its prices.

According to an analyst at research firm UBS Investment Research, the Cupertino company could sell as many as 28 million iPads in the coming year, pointing out that users might easily buy Apple's tablets over notebooks in 2011.

A report by NPD research company, quoted by iFreshNews, found that contrary to common opinion, iPad sales probably didn’t damage PC sales. Only 13% of iPad consumers that were asked said they chose it instead of a regular PC. Some 48% of iPad consumers in the US have a Mac computer versus 11% of the general population in the US. Mac sales around the world now stand at 5.3% of the computers market.

Story filed 07.10.10