iPad sold out for first week of pre-order

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 28 March 2010 09:45

Your IT - Home IT

If you're in the US and thinking of pre-ordering an iPad for delivery on April 3rd, you're too late and will just have to wait a bit longer!

After protestations of iFail and iTampon by the iPunditry, the iPad has enjoyed great pre-sales success.

Estimates of around half a million iPads being pre-ordered have been made, not including iPads that are to be picked up in-store, which reports say is higher pre-interest in the iPad than the iPhone enjoyed during the same pre-availability phase.

More evidence of the iPad's initial popularity comes from the iPad Planet website which shows that Apple's first week allocation of iPads has clearly sold out, with new pre-orders promising shipping by April 12th, a date that used to be official US launch day of April 3rd.

While some cynics will simply claim that Apple has limited stocks of the iPad in the first week to achieve such a 'sold out' status, it seems clear that iPad interest is very real, as are the numbers of iPad orders, and that even if Apple's initial allocation isn't as large as it would like, the iPad is the tablet that is sending competitors mad and green with envy.

Sure, Google's Android could easily be converted into a larger tablet form factor, as could Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series, or Nokia's Maemo, or even as has happened with Windows 7 itself.

But while Windows 7 touch-screen tablets are on the market, the other potential tableteers are still months away from any real launch, while Apple officially goes to market, in the US at least, in less than a week.

Continued on page two, please read on!