The new iPadisn’t even out yet, but that’s not stopping people from trying to guess how big a hit it will be. One industry analyst estimates it’ll best the original iPad launch by more than a factor of three.

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said in a note to investors today that he expects Apple to sell at least 1 million iPads on the first day of release, Friday, March 16, AppleInsider reports. When Apple debuted the original iPad, the company said it sold 300,000 units on launch day. Apple never gave a day-one figure for the iPad 2, citing supply-chain difficulties.

Munster compared the coming launch of the third-generation iPad to the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010. Since the launch of the first iPad, Apple has sold 55 million iPads total. When the iPhone 4 was poised to debut — in just five countries — Apple had sold 50 million iPhones worldwide. Apple said sales of the iPhone 4 numbered 1.7 million in the first three days.

“Given the new iPad will be sold in 12 countries on 3/16,” Munster wrote. “We are confident the company will sell over 1 (million) on launch day.”

The iPhone, of course, has gone on to capture huge swaths of the global mobile market, with Apple selling 37 million iPhones in the last quarter alone, the same quarter of the launch of the iPhone 4S.

Will the iPad achieve similar victories among tablets? Without a serious competitor, it looks like the iPad’s success is limited only by the size of the tablet market, which is growing steadily. Demand for the new model is so great, that ship dates have been pushed back to next week. Some studies have said the iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market until at least 2015.

-allindstrom.com