• CNBC, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 10:30 AM

But, do people really need another device?! Apparently so, as iPad adoption rates soar past records set by the DVD player. Indeed, according to Bernstein Research -- cited by Fast Money -- the iPad's current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter -- blowing past the one million units the iPhone sold in its first quarter, and the 350,000 units sold in the first year by the DVD player, i.e., the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product ever.

"The iPad did not seem destined to be a runaway product success straight out of the box," Colin McGranahan, retail analyst at Bernstein Research, writes in a note. "By any account, the iPad is a runaway success of unprecedented proportion." At this present rate, the iPad will pass gaming hardware and the cellular phone to become the 4th biggest consumer electronics category with estimated sales of more than $9 billion in the U.S. next year, according to Bernstein.

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