Apple announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3.

These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple?s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day.

"It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world?it?s going to be a game changer," said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. "iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad."

Many other handset makers and PC vendors, including Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard are expected to follow Apple's move into the new category of devices, between traditional PCs and smartphones.

Nokia has also entered the PC industry last year when it introduced the Nokia Booklet 3G, its first laptop and analysts believe that the cellphone maker is currently working on its own tablet computer, scheduled to reach stores later this year. Sush a device could either run on Microsoft's Windows software or on the new MeeGo operating system, the software venture of Nokia and Intel. Intel and Nokia merged their Moblin and Maemo software platforms earlier this year creating a unified Linux-based platform that would run on multiple hardware platforms across a wide range of computing devices, including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets and mediaphones