Jeepers! This just in: An Apple press release states the company sold its three millionth iPad yesterday, just 80 days after its launch. To put this statistic in perspective, Amazon took two years to sell the same amount of Kindle units.

Analysts are going home with their tail between their legs. Most predicted much less optimistic sales numbers; Morgan Stanley‘s Katy Huberty, for example, believed 3 million units would only sell after a full quarter.

According to Business Insider, if the average sales price of an iPad and accessories was $650, this would mean that Apple just raked in $1.95 billion in revenue. Whaaaaat.

(title image via Gizmodo)

Any big product launch opens up lots of side markets (can you say custom iPod docks?), but we could not have possibly anticipated this: A company called iPadDummy.net is selling fake iPads for just $49. But these are no iPeds; they truly are dummies, in the sense that they contain no electronics at all and do not function. But they seem like handy facsimiles! Dummy iPads look a whole lot like real iPads, nail the dimensions, and even have a heft to them (21.76 oz versus the 24 oz of the real iPad).

More pics after the jump:

You mean other than the iPad? HEY-oooooooo!

But seriously, folks. Consumers in Australia say that some JB Hi-Fi stores told them that they could not sell them an iPad unless they bought other stuff too. Like a docking station, screen protector, Telstra SIM cards, or charging adapters, even after having it pointed out to them that the iPad box said that the charger was included.

When customers asked why they couldn’t just buy an iPad, the stores answered: Apple policy.

As the iPad goes international today, the Asian market will be faced with a choice of two very similarly named options: the United States’ iPad or China’s new product, the iPed.

According to a TBS news special as reported by Kotaku, the iPed is on sale in Shenzhen, China. Why go to Shenzhen besides the iPed? To visit the Foxconn plant, which “just so happens” to be the manufacturing site for the iPad and the iPhone.

Given the iPad‘s surprise success, the U.S. release date of the iPad 3G has been the subject of some confusion: Yesterday, when Apple posted an update to its store to the effect that the 3G would be available “by May 7th,” some analysts took it to mean that Apple had experienced a “production bottleneck” due to demand, and that the U.S. release of the tablets were effectively being pushed back from its previous late April target, just as the European release of the iPad has been delayed.

Well, Apple has just cleared things up, and its initial target still holds: The iPad 3G with Wi-Fi will be delivered to preorder customers on April 30th, and will be available in stores at 5:00pm on April 30th.

We know you’re not sick of news from the iPad rumor mill. According to Taiwanese paper Digitimes, Apple is apparently planning to release a 5- to 7-inch iPad designed for consumers who don’t want the full experience of the iPad early next year. The same iPad that was released just last weekend. Quick on their feet, aren’t they?

Another day, another iPad sales estimate: This time, from Chitika, an online advertising network which pegs the figure at 500,000 and counting.

The methodology sounds clever, and is certainly a step up from counting people at New York’s 5th Avenue Apple Store on the iPad’s first day. According to Chitika, they arrived at their figure by tracking the number of iPads logging into their network for the first time and multiplying by the estimated percentage of the Internet they’re covering at that time:

If ThinkGeek ever does get around to making that real-life iCade, it looks like you just may have something to do with it (if you don’t mind voiding your iPad warranty and pissing off Nintendo): ZodTTD, the programmer who brought us classic gaming emulators for the iPhone like snes4iphone, psx4iphone, and gameboy4iphone, has unleashed a demo video of an un-jailbroken iPad playing Mario Kart. On Twitter, ZodTTD also posted a picture of an associate playing Super Mario 64 on a jailbroken iPad:

G4tv’s Attack of the Show, as part of its Epic April event, just produced and released a video for death metal band Distended Warranty’s “iHate Therefore iPad.” In it, the lead singer — who looks suspiciously like  host Kevin Pereira – decries the iPad’s lameness after he needlessly sacrificed a lamb amidst the hype. Blood, pyrotechnics, and faux Ozzy Osbourne-shilling ensue.

Whenever Apple releases a new product, you can always find slick cases and carriers from companies like Belkin and InCase that come in your choice of neoprene or silicone and a host of predictable colors and patterns. While silicone and neoprene are great for implants and scuba diving, I usually turn to Etsy to see what more design-oriented and textile-friendly cases its crowd of crafters have whipped up. After all, if you’ve just dropped hundreds on an iPad, why throw a perfunctory sleeve over it when you can dress it in fabulously tactile materials like mottled leather, felted wool, and linen?

Here are my top picks for the discerning iPad user: