Apple’s iPad became available for preorder on Friday, and reports, over 120,000 iPads were sold in the first day.

The figure is taken from a sample of 99 orders for 110 iPads taken by the board, units that were merely reserved rather than sold not included in the statistics.

As a result, AAPL Sanity’s calculations conclude that 119,987 units were picked up by those placing pre-orders on day one, with the cheaper 3G-only units making up 69 per cent of all of the sales.

According to analyst Victor Castroll of Valcent Financial Group:

“Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven’t touched or for that matter, even seen in person.”

Earlier, it was announced that Apple could only get 300k units on store shelves at launch day. A couple of days ago, reactions have surfaced around the Web about ordering problems. The Apple iPad will be officially available in three weeks time.

Castroll was one of two AAPL Sanity members who monitored the order numbers as they flowed in, but he credits Deagol – a blogger-investor whose predictions of Apple’s earnings are consistently more accurate than the Street’s – with doing the heaving lifting. You can follow Deagol’s work at Deagol’s AAPL Model.

Estimates of the number of iPads Apple will have manufactured by April range from a high of 1 million to a low of 300,000.

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