iPad shortage forces Apple to delay international launch until May - Page 2

buy me one and I'll ship you one. do you have paypal?

This is why I moved from the UK to USA, just so I can lays get Apple goodies early, well that and the weather.

Ooh... the stock market loves it! Delay it some more, Apple...........!!!!!

(Just kidding, just kidding.)

C'mon guys! Stop buyin' ipads! Otherwise... no more Corona beer for you!

Next!

I've been a fan of this device for some time. I just downloaded the citrix client for ipad and connected up to the windows applications at the hospital where I work. The ipad is much more usable than the devices we are currently using which cost up to four times as much. I continue to be wow'd by this device the more and more I use it for work. Coupled with the Enterprise improvements that are coming in OS 4 I expect the iPad shortage to continue. I can see us buying 100's of these. This is where apple is going to bust into the enterprise. Wow.

Yeah sure, we should get them your number so you can fill them in too. The ipad shares the same OS and family of products features as the other mobil devices. This particular appliance specializes as a media hog. It also does other things, none of them quite as special as the media application that it is intended for. Of course that includes all sorts of interdependent usage.... like students will use it for rental text books in the future or NOW in some cases.. this is a media appliance that was already thought out and tested and calculated for a hardware life cycle with minor upgrades in software and few if any upgrades in hardware options until a yearly update takes place.. see ipod, mac, iphone and other products. They don't do a small run .. they do a total solution run that covers a estimated market saturation for the first wave of adopters .. it is so well planned out that a success is to supply the estimated needs.. a failure in this case is both good and bad, they underestimated demand and now will have to delay opening up distribution. they good is that it is wildly more successful so far than was predicted.. and believe me.. they worked on predicting with every crystal balls worth of evidence they could come up with..

this is consumer electronics.. with all due respect for the Genius Bar folks.. their survey information is a factor amongst thousands of feed back applications in place..



d

That's tragic - I would have responded exactly the same.

"My friend? My friend? You've been kicked in the nuts"

(family guy clip)

chances are they will do the same 2 per limit as they did with the US.
A limit that is still in place at the stores. 2 per day. anyone that wants to try to claim "business needs" to get more at once has to go through the business department and actually be fully vetted. No joke, I needed to get 10 for work and they had to send the company name and even what we are going to do with them on an approval form to corporate, who among other things will make sure I didn't just make up a name. And no discounts.
I'm sure it's to keep from selling to resellers who will jailbreak them, export them etc but it is a tad annoying. However they did say I should get the approval today or tomorrow and they were out of stock anyway. but as soon as they get it they will hold the units and call me to come pay for them right away.


American company doesn't have to deal with all the import rules. THAT is why America is the 'priority' with all things Apple


again most of that is due to your country's import taxes



Announced Tuesday morning, bought Tuesday afternoon, data transfer done last night while I slept. Almost finished.



be happy, they could have not said anything and the date would just slip by for days/weeks


Refer to your keynote, unlocked 3g. if the local carrier has the right tech coverage and uses microsims you are good


You did notice the new laptops yesterday right

Hmm, pre-order one May 10th or pick one up in Syracuse on my way by on the 14th. Decisions, decisions.

I would like to point out that it took Amazon more then 2 years to release the Kindle internationally. And what about the Zune.

Not a problem at all. We've got enough beta-testers for now.

And the U.S. is last to get most electronics from Japan, including PS3's, Japanese car companies finally shipping their sports cars after decades, Subaru STI, Mitsu EVO, Skyline. Nokia phones that never reach US shores without some crazy unlocked phone and bought on some foreign website.

The U.S. get its fair share of snubs fairly often. I have been felt the same way since I was five after finding out we never got the cool quality die-cast models that only Japan can produce. The American knock-offs would make the Chinese knockoffs look like quality products..

So it happens on both sides, at least it's just a month delay..some of us are still waiting for many companies to offer the same products they offer in other home countries..

Reminds me of the original iPod mini. :-( I hope Apple was physically forced to do this because they've accepted and confirmed orders for 3G models that they could not fulfill any other way. Good for Apple (and the eBay sellers), sad for us Europeans.

Edit: The € currency crisis looming from Greece's bad economy might also play a role. Apple will probably prefer to wait a few more weeks to see where the exchange rates are going to trend for the rest of the year.

Sad news for my fellow Canadians.
I assume this means canadian itunes will still be locked out as well as app store. More of just a slight pain for me as I forgot to load up on a US iTunes card so I can't buy apps over wifi or songs via iTunes but if tethered/ synced to my iMac there is no issue. Glad I happened upon the apple store in waikiki on the 5 th and bought my 64gb iPad on my last day of vacation.

The wait is worth it!

C'mon, Steve, split the stock.

Thanks!

If need be there are work-arounds. One is to order different models.

Wasn't this product the failure that "nobody will buy?"

That is why you get an U.S. Gift Card.

You can't tether the iPad.

Exactly. Like I said (altho' I suggested a pre-paid credit card since it might be easier to get than a US gift card... basically the same idea tho').

I assume the iPad App Store application will start working once the iPad goes international.

Span is not a country...think we need to do a little proofreading action recently

Of course I did! But that was known early enough in the day yesterday that it should have had an impact yesterday.

It was interesting to see that the after-hours price started to move early today, and there hasn't been much else by way of news from/about Apple today....

But, I admit, it is all pure speculation.

Other than for psychological satisfaction and (perhaps) a short-term bump, very little likely real impact.

The iPad features/specs should be no different as are Apple's Macs.

The iPad is not restricted to one operator.

More operators does not equal lower plan costs. We have 4 in Canada and nothing changed.

By the way, what is the roaming/long distance charges between the UK and Malta? As you can see in the attachment*, there is none from Maine to California.

*http://goeurope.about.com/od/europea...arison-map.htm

Never tried a pre-paid credit card.

The local iPad App Store will become available as soon as the product is made available in the respective country.

One other thing, the international delay should help and give the various international Apple subsidiaries more time to get their respective iBook Stores in place.

I believe the local iPad stores are open for business already. It just seems that one cannot get those apps off the computer and onto the pad.

You mean Boy George & The Culture Club?

If you had said Sol, I would have gotten on a plane to Cupertino immediately.

Not true. You can still launch the desktop version iTunes on Mac OS X and go to the App Store tab to buy applications using a non-US account. And there are a lot of iPad apps available. Just not the Apple iPad apps. And you CAN sync your purchased iPad apps to your iPad. I know. I've done it. At least in Canada. The ONLY reason you would need a US iTunes account right now are for two things:

1. To use the App Store app on your iPad
2. To buy Apple's iPad apps

You are right about the first part. But I would think that you could get them off your computer and onto the iPad if you had one.

Yup...

This is not an artificially-created supply problem. Apple anything (except AppleTV) is so popular now that it would be stupid to hold back production just to create more demand - and it wouldn't work. The demand is already there, and the best way to create more is to get more product out in public, so more people can touch it.

It's most likely Apple gave their best estimate of demand, set up production lines to match their predictions, and the predictions were short. Pretty simple.

One thing they probably learned from the iPhone is how to increase production more rapidly when there's not enough initial supply.

I just get a buddy in the US of A to gift my US iTunes account the apps I want, log out of the Canuckistan store, and log in with my US email. Pay him back via PayPal. Easy-peasy.

I wish the AppleInsider report hewed a little more closely to what Apple's announcement actually said. Apple did not say it "sold" 500,000 iPads, it said it "delivered" that number of devices. Apple always words its public statements very carefully so I think the use of the word "delivered" was not casual but a clear and conscious choice, especially because less than a week ago at the iPhone 4.0 preview, Jobs said Apple had "sold" over 450,000 units. There is a switch in language. Somehow, AppleInsider and most of the other sites reporting this story this morning have transformed "delivered" into "sold." They're not synonyms.

I don't doubt that those "delivered" iPads will in fact be sold into people's hands very quickly. I think the iPad is already a big success; I bought one on the first day. But I think for journalism's sake, it's important to point out the distinction that Apple itself is making between something "delivered" and something "sold."

There will be iPad like devices that would be released during the later part of this year and early next year. To ensure a significant headstart, the more iPads Apple sells in the US, the great experience from these customers become the most potent selling points. You trust your friend's and relative's recommendation than any other form of advertisement. Each iPad owner becomes a salesperson. The positive buzz from media reinforced by Apple adverstisements will further enhance the recommendations from friends and relatives.

Diluting the supply by disbursing it around the world would diminish the aforementioned strategy. It will impact the acceptance of iPad-killers.

Supply and Demand.

As to limiting supply, artificially, I doubt this.

Do not forget that there were so many unknowns about the iPad's acceptability before it was really out. Many similar products failed dismally before the iPad. Morever, there were so many "negative" reviews when it was first intriduced. Even pundits who like the iPad concept and were known to like Apple products during the past decade had much lower expectations of the first year sale of the iPad (about a million), partly based fromt eh aforementioned unknowns.

Apple is aware of the above. Each company has to estimate the demand. The componets ordered from different companies had to be oredered and overestimation is very costly. Remember that each product has its own assembly line and labor had to be hired (manpower is one of the highest costs), The production had to be continuous, rather than in spurts. An average production per day for about a year must have been planned. A production rate of 20,000 per day is not so much different from 25,000 per day, but the total in a year would be quite significant.

It is better to start with a lower baseline peoduction per day then ramp it up, once the actual demand has been better established.

Economics 101 would tell you that the price is dictated by supply and demand. Apart from sosting money, oversupply would also affect the mystique and desirability of the product.

Anyone who does not understand the above are hopeless.

CGC

Now I have to take my chances and drive to Buffalo and 'hope' that I can get a 64Gb 3G iPad in store. This isn't working out like it's supposed to. At least it should be a bit cheaper. *sigh*

What are the chances of these puppies being on shelf for April 25th? Fingers crossed.

My recently deceased erudite father....used to say that, albeit rarely. Made me laugh! Thanks

Sorry, not buying it. First of all, it's not like Apple is not revealing sales figures. The sales figures are quite impressive and the stock price (245 at this moment with a market cap of $222.4 billion), reflects it (and generally, the market would tend to punish Apple for releasing late because they're leaving money on the table). Secondly, it's simply not true that back in the days of the Mac IIci and Quadra 840av that Apple couldn't meet demand. I was a developer back then and never had problems getting any machines. When Jobs returned to Apple and they had a plethora of models and confusing redundant product lines (Mac, II, LC, Centris, Quadra, etc.), legend has it that once they started releasing newer machines that made the old lines obsolete and also because the strategy was to simplify the product line and marketing message, most of the old inventory wound up in landfills.

What's more likely is simply that the factories have some QC or other issues or there are parts supplier issues and they can't get out enough units quickly enough.

Fair point. And to make it more poignant - they were worth the wait! Hope the iPad is.

I have not read of any major US company that restricted the sale of their products abroad simply because of currency fluctuations.

CGC

There should be more sales than deliveries as a product purchased online but not yet received by the customer would be counted as sold but not delivered. Stores aren't the only places that receive deliveries.