Apple says its new iPad exceeded 1 million units sold this past weekend, after less than a month on the market. (Read the company's news release here.)

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IPad reached the sales milestone far quicker than the company's iPhone, which took nearly three months to sell 1 million units. iPad's sales debut came amid enormous expectations, with Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster anticipating 600,000 to 700,000 units. The company sold 300,000 units its first day instead, 450,000 after five days and a half million by April 14.

Based on that early activity, and considering those sales only included the wi-fi version of iPad, most analysts thought it was going to be far sooner rather than later that iPad would exceed 1 million units sold. The 3G model ($629 to $829 depending on configuration) went on sale on Friday and brisk sales over the weekend did indeed push iPad over 1 million.

Prior to Apple's

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[AAPL  Loading...      ()   ] official release, Munster reported Sunday that iPad 3G had sold 300,000 units in its first weekend, after he checked with 50 Apple retail locations. His original estimate that Apple would sell a total of 1.3 million iPads during the June quarter may now seem tame against actual figures.

By comparison, iPhone sold 270,000 first generation units in its first 30 days of availability, and it took another three months after that to reach 1 million. When iPhone 3GS went on sale a year after the original iPhone debuted, it took a mere three days to sell 1 million units. Total iPhone sales are now over 45 million units globally.

Apple originally forecast 10 million iPads would sell in 2010. After iPad's first weekend of sales, UBS upped its full year estimate to 7.5 million from 7 million.

An online advertising firm, Chitika, suggested last week that iPad had already topped 1.17 million units sold, tracking sales activity through its own unique system. Chitika says California is the hottest region for iPad, accounting for 19 percent of sales so far; New York is second with 8.3 percent, and Texas in third place with 8 percent. Montana and Wyoming were at the bottom of Chitika's list with .08 and .03 percent of activity respectively.

All of this data seems to bode well for Apple. The company will also likely give an iPad sales update at its Worldwide Developers Conference scheduled in San Francisco in early June, when Apple is also widely expected to introduce its next generation iPhone and an update to its operating system.

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