Apple Tells The World it Must Wait for The iPad

Apple has good and bad news. Good news if you are an Apple stockholder or one of the many Americans still awaiting your iPad, bad news if you live outside the United States and don’t wish to pay up to $300 above the retail price for the iPad on Ebay where sales to international customers continue to show what some are willing to pay to get their hands on this new mobile platform.

In a press release today Apple stated..

“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™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10. 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.”

This is the type of news can only make the US first “newscasters” at Fox News happy. With the “tablet wars” about to begin in earnest, Apple risks alienating a huge market outside of the United States. With German company, Neophonie, demonstrating its WePad this week and the expectation of seeing both a tablet from Nokia and HP in early fall, Apple can ill afford continued production delays if it wishes to continue the buzz surrounding the iPad. While Apple has made many of its iPhone customers happy over the last week with the preview of OS 4.0 they continue to disappoint those overseas.

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