It’s official. The iPad is such a block-buster success that international customers will have to wait. (At least that’s Apple’s spin on the situation). Originally, the international delay was expected to be addressed by the end of April. Now, Apple won’t be taking international pre-orders ’till May 10th. Here’s the rest of those details…
The official statement from Apple’s press page is as follows:
“Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks…Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month….We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far.”
International Disappointment
Well, as happy as us Americans are, some people in Switzerland are less than thrilled. MacStories.net is reporting that one such concerned Apple patron e-mailed Steve Jobs about the delay. He had a few harsh words for the Apple man…
“Dear Mr Jobs
On behalf of the international community of Apple consumers I would like to protest at the way Apple is apparently leaving us out in the cold with the Apple iPad product….Twice to my knowledge you have falsely stated international availability of the iPad and while I do not believe this is any fault of your own, I can imagine that you are not happy being shown as deliberately pulling the wool over the rest of the worlds eyes….can you clarify what is happening…?”
And Jobs, who has been chatty as of late, replied, short, terse and simple:
“‘deliberately pulling the wool over the rest of the worlds eyes’ Are you nuts? We are doing the best we can. We need enough units to have a responsible and great launch.”
So there’s an interesting perspective.
Reality Check
We don’t really know how many iPads have been made and what their production schedule looks like, but apparently Apple and Jobs want a lot of them. Even though the initial sales figures were lower than predicted, iPads are still selling like hotcakes. And iPads dominated at major channel partner and corporate software conferences in San Francisco this week.
This blogger thinks, because of all this hype, it might actually overshadow releases like HP’s Slate. Demand will be so pent-up and hyped up people might not even consider the slate ’till they have their hands on an iPad. What’s more, it clearly shows that despite all the criticism for the iPad not being a million things or having a million things (that it’s not supposed to have anyway), Steve Jobs made the right bet, and the iPad in its current state, seems widely accepted by the public.
Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.
Read More About This Topic
Share This Post
Tags: iPad | Steve Jobs
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Subscribe: RSS Feed
