I would assume it includes the pre-orders, because if it did not then I would guess we would see a headline more like: 3 million iPad Minis in three days PLUS another two million (or whatever) in pre-orders!

Regardless, that's an impressive number for a device that already had well established competition and Steve Jobs claiming nobody wanted it.

EDIT: oh wait, that's 4th gen and iPad Minis combined? I thought it was for just the mini. Are there numbers out there about how the mini sold? I don't see it broken down in the press release unless I totally missed it. I think it's a bit unfair to say that the latest iPad and the mini doubled the number sold of the previous iPad since that's comparing the totals of two products against one. Still, impressive numbers.

Yes, since they bill at shipment. And it includes iPad 2 sales as well.

It's number sold, so it's not all pre-ordered, only those that shipped prior to today. When you pre-order, you are able to cancel up until it's shipped, and payment is not taken until it's shipped, so these numbers can't be counted.

Given that the white models sold out* within hours (or was it minutes?) and the entry level black model sold out the next day, subsequent orders would not be included in this figure.

* By sold out I mean shipping date slipped

i'm guessing preorders count towards the "first day" of sale. However, this is no differrent than every other "Apple sells X of Y on launch weekend" - all of them have had a similar "preorder time". That being said, the numbers seemingly don't include Wifi + cellular models ( as with previous iPads).