Given the popularity of Apple's (News - Alert) newest devices and the pull the company holds in the tech industry, it's not a great surprise that some Wall Street analysts are keeping a close eye – a VERY close eye – on the sales and inventory levels at Apple stores right now.

According to FORTUNE, one of these teams of analysts was led by Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore, who conducted an informal survey by calling more than 100 Apple retail locations and 50 resellers. Whitemore encountered comments from store managers like, “iPads are still selling like crazy” and “the 11-inch MacBook Air has been flying off the shelves.”

To get down to actual numbers, an analyst team led by Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray kept a close watch on actual sales in various Apple retail locations. Piper Jaffray made a number of interesting discoveries, according to FORTUNE, including the following details:

• Macs were leaving stores at the rate of 8.2 units per hour per store, down from 8.3 last year and 13 units two years ago. “While Mac sales were flat year-over-year,” Munster wrote, “we believe it is too early to make a call on Macs in the December quarter. Note that Mac NPD data in the first month of the quarter (October) was up 20 percent year-over-year.”
• iPads were leaving Apple stores at an even faster rate – 8.8 units per hour. There are no other Black Friday (News - Alert) iPad sales to compare with, the device having been launched this year, but Munster told FORTUNE he believes that these numbers are in line with his (relatively modest) prediction that Apple will sell 5.5 million iPads this quarter.
• “Most notable in our observations,” wrote Munster, “we noticed that the iPad is gaining traction (driven by lower price versus the Mac) among demographics in which the Mac has historically not been successful. The bottom line is that Apple's addressable market is expanding with the iPad.”

One can almost hear the wireless carriers likely to benefit from the sales of all those iPads smiling from here.