Benzinga | Jan 27, 2021 09:57AM EST

This Day In Market History: Apple Unveils Original iPad

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that happened on this date.

What Happened? On this day in 2010, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPad.

Where Was The Market? The S&P 500 traded at 1,097.50 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded at 10,236.16.

What Else Was Going On In The World? In 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, a healthcare reform bill also known as "Obamacare." The explosion of the BP plc (NYSE:BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the largest marine oil spill in history. The average cost of a new house in the U.S. was $232,880.

Apple Launches Tablets: On Jan. 27, 2010, Apple unveiled its highly anticipated iPad tablet for the first time. Just three years after the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, CEO Steve Jobs was looking to prove that the massively successful Apple smartphone wasn't a fluke.

The original Pad was 0.5 inches thick, weighed 1.5 pounds and cost just $499.

"iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before," Jobs said at the time.

Plenty of people were skeptical of the tablet format, which they saw at the time as more bulky than an iPhone and less useful than a laptop. However, the iPad was a huge commercial success. Apple reported $2.16 billion in iPad sales in the third quarter of 2010. By the first quarter of 2011, that number had jumped to $4.37 billion. In the first quarter of 2014, Apple reported a record $11.46 billion in iPad sales alone.

Investors who bought Apple shares on the day the iPad was unveiled are also very happy. Since that day, Apple's total return has been 2,140% compared to just a 335% total return for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY).

Photo credit: matt buchanan, via Wikimedia Commons