AppleInsider has a report today that should reassure anyone slightly concerned about Apple’s recently published Q2 figures, which featured the surprising news that iPad sales had dropped from 7.33 million units in the first quarter of fiscal 2011 to 4.69 million in Q2. According to AppleInsider, Wall Street analysts had not expected such a big drop in sales, with some predicting that the sales would still be around 6.2 million when the results were published. However, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from Concorde Securities was one of those who was right on the money with his prediction earlier in the week that Apple would reveal that it had sold 4.6 million iPads in Q2. Kuo gave the transition from the original iPad to the iPad 2 as the main reason for the drop in sales. Here’s the good news that I mentioned at the start though: according to AppleInsider, Kuo predicts that iPad 2 sales will increase “by a big margin” in Q3 of the 2011 fiscal year, and that they will leap by over 100% sequentially. Kuo also says that the white iPad 2 is proving to be more popular than the black one, accounting for 60 to 65 % of iPad 2 sales.

Source: AppleInsider | After Q2 decline, Apple's iPad shipments expected to double in Q3 fiscal 2011

The 60% preference of white over black is most interesting. I have a white one only because they didn't have black in stock. It wasn't because I thought white was better.

Best Buy just went through a short term redistribution process of pulling various models from one store to meet the backorder needs of another ... that wasn't trivial or cheap.

When building one model (one color) and doubling the volume it reduces cost, packaging, marketing, inventory and distribution.

My vote ... forget white. As a color it's okay ... but like I said at the start ... I only have white because I couldn't get black in the storage size I wanted... I tried. Sobeit. FWIW.

Sine they've sold every iPad they could make, maybe (for whatever reason) they made more white ones...