Who’s Buying the iPad?

Unless you’ve been ignoring the news for the last week, you’ve heard about the release of the iPad—which Apple is touting as a “magical” new lightweight device that allows you to surf the Web on the go. So who is hopping on the bandwagon to buy the latest revolution in mobile Web products?

The home of the Silicon Valley is living up to its tech-savvy reputation. According to Chikita Research, almost one-fifth of iPads are in California (that’s one iPad per about every 1,500 people). New York and Texas come in second place, with about 8% of the iPads. The District of Columbia has the most iPads relative to its population, with one iPad for every 785 people.

Chikita Research estimates that more than 500,000 iPads have been sold overall. The research firm tracked more than 70,000 new iPads alone as of yesterday afternoon. That makes sense, considering Apple announced that it sold more than 300,000 iPads last Saturday, which was the first day of the release.

Chikita has been tracking how many iPads are browsing the Internet by counting how many new, unique iPads are coming through its advertising network and then multiplying that by how much of the Internet we see at any given time to figure out how many iPads in total are out there. You can get up-to-the-minute results on Chikita’s live iPad tracker.