With the last-month reports that Apple iPad preorders were ‘brisk,’ and expectations galore that the initial sales of the tablet might be sky-high, the Monday statistics revealed by Apple show a sale of over 300,000 iPads on the device’s launch day, April 3, including preorders.

The official launch-day iPad sales figures fell short of the sky-high expectations of some Wall Street analysts, who, on an average, were projecting the first day sales of the much-hyped multimedia tablet to fall in the range of between 400,000 and 500,000 units.

In fact, with Apple promoting the iPad as a potential “game changer, the analysts are also expecting the worldwide sales of the iPad this year to be fairly high – while financial-services firm Kaufman Bros. expects the figures to be nearly 2.5 million, research firm iSuppli Corp. is expecting a whopping 7.1 million global sales of the iPad during the year.

Meanwhile, the buyers showed a kind of ‘mixed’ response on the launch-day reaction of the iPad – with most of the Apple stores swarmed by buyers in the morning, and crowds disappearing at many stores by mid-afternoon.

Commenting on the first-day sales of the iPad, analyst Michael Abramsky, at RBC Capital, said: “Given that not everyone understands what it (the iPad) does yet, it’s a pretty good launch at the end of the day.”