Later, Apple COO Tim Cook called the iPad 2 demand "staggering," and said that orders were bogged down in the "mother of all backlogs."

Currently, the lag time between ordering and shipping is between one and two weeks on Apple's Web site.

Cook said that the company was working hard on matching supply with demand, but refused to predict when Apple would be able to make enough tablets. "I'm confident that we'll build a large number of iPads this quarter, but when we will match demand, I don't know," Cook said.

Marshall's betting that Apple will solve the supply problem quickly, perhaps as early as the current quarter, which ends June 30.

During the Q&A section of the call, Cook was asked why Apple -- which sold 7.3 million first-generation tablets in the last three months of 2010 -- couldn't meet demand for the iPad 2. Was it a forecasting error, an analyst asked.