You people have bought over 170M iPads

You know those iPad things, the big screens that many said are like a stretched-out version of your iPhone?

Turns out we’ve bought over 170 million of them.

Now, let’s not get too excited about that up-and-to-the-right graph. We’re not surprised sales have gone up over time; we’ve seen them continue to creep despite some recent lulls in buying.

Apple announced the first iPad in 2010 and has steadily increased sales as people began to see the real consumer benefits tablets provide, no longer seeing them as clunky or business-only devices. In 2012 alone, the company sold over 58 million iPads, encountering a bit of a cooling-off period as more households obtained the medium-sized screens.

Last quarter, the cooling-off continued as Apple sold 14.6 million iPads, according to its third quarter earnings report. In the third quarter of 2012 Apple had sold 17 million.

But with today’s new iPad releases and updates, the company surely hopes to continue the hockey stick on this still relatively new piece of technology.