Apple is to delay the international release of the iPad by a month, citing high demand.
It seems that despite claiming the whole world would want one, it hasn’t made provision for non-Americans. So customers in the rest of the world will now have to wait until the end of May.
The company will announce international pricing and start taking online pre-orders by Monday 10 May. Perhaps a little smugly, it says it expects demand to oustrip supply for a few weeks yet.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that he’d shifted half a million of the things so far. But most observers actually felt that the first-day sales of 300,000 were actually a bit on the light side, and that the device is less in demand than expected.
“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 as more people see and touch an iPad,” says the company.
“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.”
Absolutely, guys – we’re chuffed to bits.
