Close to one hundred people queued outside Apple's London flagship store on Regent Street a full twelve hours before the product was due to go on sale at eight o'clock the following morning. The atmosphere was one of ecstatic excitement, more like the fever pitch that signals the appearance of a major pop superstar than the anticipation that normally attends the release of new computer hardware.

But then, this wasn't the release of just any computer hardware. This was the release of a technological superstar, Apple's revolutionary new touch screen, tablet computer, the iPad: the perfect adult toy, an online platform for reading books, watching movies, listening to music and playing games.

In the first 80 days after its stateside April debut, Apple sold over two million iPads in the United States. Over a million iPads have also been sold in the UK. When the company released its financial results on July 21, it announced earnings of 10.27 billion for the previous quarter " up 78 per cent from the comparable quarter in 2009.

Now comes a revised forecast from research firm iSuppli: Apple will sell 12.9 iPads by the end of 2010, not 7.1 million iPads as the firm had previously predicted. Sales will continue to be strong over the coming years, iSuppli projects, reaching 36.5 million by 2011 and 50.4 million by 2012.

Why is the iPad so extraordinarily popular? Part of the reason is simple supply and demand: there aren't enough iPads for all the people that want them; a scarcity, say industry analysts, that will be particularly in evidence come Christmas 2010. When you can't get something you really, really want, you end up wanting it even more.

"ISuppli believes that the only limitation on iPad sales now is production, not demand," noted Rhoda Alexander, iSuppli's director of monitor research in the market research firm's recently published Emerging Display Technologies Q2 2010 Special Report. "Apple has taken a very controlled approach introducing this product to new markets, with manufacturing limitations likely to be the major inhibitor on how quickly iPad sales expand."

But part of the phenomenon is the fervour of the faithful. Apple customers have long been known for their almost cult-like appreciation of all the company's products. It wasn't all that long ago, after all, that Apple was surviving by the skin of its teeth, its market share in the vast universe of personal computers a meagre 4 per cent. Then came the iPod. Today, Apple's corporate net worth exceeds that of its rival, Microsoft. But true Apple aficionados, Mac fans for decades, remember when you had to buy spare parts for your iBook in hobby stores because electronics emporiums refused to carry them.

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