Tech blogs were ablaze Friday with speculation that iPads were selling at a rate of 20,000 an hour on the first morning Apple () was taking orders for the tablet device it will begin delivering April 3.

Apple chief Steve Jobs has hailed the iPad as a “revolutionary” device for surfing the Web, playing games and listening to music, saying that it will carve out a niche between smart phones and laptop computers.

No one is really sure how consumers will use the iPad, which runs on a mobile-phone operating system, not on Apple’s Mac OS, to accommodate the tens of thousands of apps built for the iPhone. That’s prompted some critics to dismiss the device as an overgrown iPod Touch.

But many analysts and investors believe that Apple has another commercial hit on its hands.

Apple appears on a daily list created using StockScouter, an tool that identifies stocks with strong growth prospects in the near term. All stocks with Scouter ratings of 8, 9 or 10 are considered for the list, which is then shortened to exclude stocks with a trading volume below 50,000 shares a day. The remaining stocks are ranked on the basis of market capitalization, sector membership and whether they are growth or value stocks.

Analyst Brian Marshall at Broadpoint AmTech recently raised his iPad sales forecast to 4 million from 2.2 million in the first year, saying the iPad’s “true genius” is as an entertainment device for delivery of e-books, newspapers, movies, games and TV shows.

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Apple

Marshall expects the iPad to be a catalyst for Apple shares. He reiterated his “buy” rating on the stock March 9 and upped his price target by $16 a share to $280. “In our view, Apple remains the best technology company on the planet,” Marshall wrote in a note to clients.

Apple shares hit a record high of $227.73 on Friday. The stock could keep climbing until the iPad hits the stores April 3, according to some observers, including “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer, who recently wrote that the best time to invest is after a product is unveiled but before it gets into consumers’ hands.

StockScouter beats the market

At , we think our StockScouter rating system is about as good as it gets for those who are trying to decide where to invest. Scouter rates stocks on a scale of 1 to 10. Since it was launched on Aug. 1, 2001, a portfolio of Scouter’s top 50 picks has generated a total return that has clobbered that of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ()

Digital media, personal computing

$226.60

7.5%

10

Atmel ()

Memory chips

$5.14

11.5%

10

Marvell Technology ()

Semiconductors

$20.28

-2.2%

10

News Corp. ()

Entertainment, media

$14.03

2.5%

10

Petrobras ()

Oil and natural gas

$47.10

-1.2%

10

Union Pacific ()

Railroads

$73.00

14.2%

10

Cisco Systems ()

Networking and communication gear

$25.88

8.1%

9

Home Depot ()

Home improvement products

$32.45

12.2%

9

IBM ()

Computer products and services

$127.94

-2.3%

9

Sara Lee ()

Food and beverages

$14.03

15.2%

9

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