[gamble]

No kidding. They sold 80% of the consensus prediction of 5 million units. That still puts Apple on track to sell at least 16 million iPads in its first year on the market.

Minimum retail price for an iPad is $500. 16m units X $500 = at least $8 billion gross revenue.

How many companies can take a new product line from $0 to $8+ billion in one year? It may 'disappoint' the analysts in a technical sense, but Apple's shareholders should be doing cartwheels at this news.