According to information out of Cupertino, Apple sold around 300,000 iPads this Saturday, launch day.This number includes preorders as well as iPads sold at the stores. Despite the device receiving glowing reviews from various sources around the internet, this number is much lower than anticipated by some analysts. Furthermore, news of the sales numbers caused Apple’s shares to drop.

Although Apple hasn’t released any specific dates yet for the international shipping of the iPad, new details from Canada are pointing towards April 24th. Apparently, an Apple Store in Canada was told that the weekend including this date was a blackout period for staff, meaning they weren’t allowed to book the day off. This goes right along with the “late April” date that Apple had said earlier in the year. If true in Canada, it would most likely be the same for other countries in the world.

According to a specific analyst group, Apple may have sold a nicely sized 120,000 iPad units on the first day of pre-orders. If this number seems strange to you, it may help knowing that their math makes sense. Basically, Apple sells about 16,500 orders a day online, but managed to sell about 124,596 on the day of the iPad preorder. Considering that about 1.11 iPads were ordered per customer, we come up with a number around 120,000.