A virtual flood of emails from MacDailyNews readers reports iPad 2 sold out shortly after going on sale at Target, Best Buy, Walmart, AT&T, and Verizon retail stores in locations across the U.S. Apparently, many of those retailers had extremely limited supplies and model choices. For example, many report that some relatively far-flung Target locations had just 5 iPads total and only one model (16GB Wi-Fi-only in black). Some – AT&T retail outlets, for example – had none in stock at all, instead referring customers to order online, which shows shipping estimates of 2-3 weeks.
Apple Retail Stores seem to have fared only slightly better. Extremely long lines (cough – Gene “Don’t Expect Long iPad 2 Lines” Munster – cough) have been reported (and photographed) nationwide. We have reports that many Apple Stores quickly ran out of iPad 2 inventory as they shuttled hundreds of customers through each store starting at 5pm local time on Friday evening. One common refrain: “I’ve been to them all, iPhone and iPad launch days, and this one had by far the longest line!”
Interestingly, from the reports we have, 3G AT&T models seem to have been the first to go at the locations we’ve heard about from readers. In some locations, white iPad 2 models dried up first, in others, the black models were gone almost immediately. Of course, we have no way of telling if those models were in shorter supply or if they were actually the most popular.
Apple’s Online Store currently shows shipping times for all eighteen iPad models of “2-3 weeks.”
Our takeaway: Apple iPad 2 launch was a major event across the U.S.A. Apple’s supplies were inadequate to satisfy extremely high demand and many customers waited hours on line only to be turned away shortly after 5pm local time. It’s a nice problem for Apple to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless. Apple needs to get more iPads made and delivered to stores yesterday. That statement will likely hold true for weeks, if not months to come.
Apple could have sold many, many more iPad 2 units than they did yesterday, if they had adequate supply levels. Apple either severely underestimated demand or their supply chain screwed up somewhere along the way and couldn’t deliver anywhere close to enough units to retail. The company turned away many, many thousands of disappointed potential iPad customers empty-handed yesterday. That is never a good thing.
One thing Apple should do immediately is bring back the availability tracker – by iPad model, please! – on their website, so iPad 2 hunters can find Apple Retail Stores that have stock.
MacDailyNews Note: If anyone has info about iPad 2 availability anywhere, please let us know below (after you snag yours).
At launch on Friday, Verizon Upper West Side NY had NO LINE for all 3G models. Walked right in and bought two.
Honolulu target had ten 64gb 3G models. Aiea best buy had 200 iPads! The line for the kahala mall apple store was insane!
Do you know if they were att and verizon ?
The big difference between this launch and the other iPhone launches I’ve been to is that the Apple Stores had far less inventory this time around. The stores I visited yesterday were all totally sold out within the first hour they went on sale and were already turning people away before 6pm. That didn’t happen at any of the iPhone launches I’ve been to. At those they had plenty for everyone, it just took a few hours of waiting sometimes to get one. Apple wanted to create publicity and shortages for this launch and they got what they wished for.
I think Apple made the strategic decision to go ahead and release the iPad 2 as soon as possible (instead of delaying a few more weeks in order to build up sufficient inventory) in order to take the wind out of the sails of the Xoom and any other would-be competitors.
I don’t know that it’s a bad gamble on Apple’s part.
@JPS comment — I agree . . . Apple chose to go to market NOW with a limited supply to squash new competitors (XOOM) and build demand. It worked.
I agree, and it was the right decision. But, they should have a priority raincheck system to give to the people who waited in line.
i was in line at Best Buy in Fayetteville,AR and was told 3 different amounts they had. I sent my wife all over town and found out that Target had 5 and she was #2 in line. I guess I am one of the lucky ones. We went back to Best Buy to get the case and zagg, they said they got 120 units, but were sold out.
I checked 3 Wal-Marts in Southern AR, none even got a shipment, nor the Targets. The ATT stores didn’t have the 3G, but the Verizon store did.
The local Best Buy had all models and colors…..except 3G. They had an ATT rep to sell MyFis which require a contract.
Went all the way to Little Rock and got the last black 16 GB ATT 3G.
Now as soon as my daughter, girlfriend and three grandkids finish playing with it (sleep) I will be able to……recharge it.
14th on line at Pentagon City Mall Apple Store (got here 1.5 hours before they opened. Got reserve ticket. Now there are two lines: one for those whose desired iPad 2 is in the store; one for those hoping a shipment arrives soon. Lines total over 200 now easily.
Just like when the iPhone was introduced, the stores in the rural areas have overstock. I had no problem getting an iPad2 yesterday evening at the local Verizon. This is a non-issue if you’re not all bunched up like mindless rats in cement canyons. While people were waiting hours in the city, all they had to do was drive a leisurely, fresh air-filled, 45 minutes into the cornfields and pick one up. No waiting, No worry. No long lines of noisy people. No big deal.
Our locals stores still have them in stock, getting dusty on the shelves, and the city idiots are still be waiting at home for the next few weeks.
City Rats: Google a map of your city. Find a small town about 1 hour drive away. Find their local Verizon/AT&T, and go get one. Geeeesh! While you’re there, grab a burger at the local diner or corner bar and discover what fresh REAL food tastes like.
Sound’s like someone (or $something) is actually forcing you to live outside the ‘cement canyons’. Don’t hate on those who can and chose to. Enjoy your cornfields!
I can picture this idiot and his friend yelling ‘squeal like a pig boi’ in the back 10 acres. REAL fresh food at the local diner, he really is living it large…
Aryugaetu, I’m with you. As I work on the Internet, I had the choice of continuing to live in the urban world of crowds, high prices, traffic jams and a high crime rate, or buying a log cabin amidst hills and forests.
Beautiful scenery, low taxes and low cost of living. I pay $1.89 for a gallon of 2% milk. You are right about the food, too. I highly recommend Brownie’s Family Restaurant at Bean Blossom.
Amenities? Plenty of them. Good restaurants, lots of live music performances in the local area and world-class performances within 20 miles. A friend invited me to dinner. The other guest was a world-renowned violinist, his next-door neighbor.
Shopping? FedEx or UPS delivers most of the stuff I buy (including, next week, my iPad 2). But the local Bear Hardware is the Alice’s Restaurant equivalent of hardware stores; I’ve never seen a hardware store in an urban setting that carries their variety of merchandise.
Those of you who enjoy the concrete jungle are welcome to stay. But there are other worlds out there, and they have their own charms. For one thing, I never lock my doors, whether I’m home or not, and that’s not a cause for worry.
I called to make a reservation for Brownie’s Family Restaurant at Bean Blossom and they told me there’s a two week wait. But, because it’s my birthday, they gave me a table for next Saturday. Whew! Now, what to wear? I WON’T be caught dead there wearing last season.
Wow.
I didn’t realize this article’s subtitle was ‘Hickboy’s Unwarranted Lashings on City Life.” … Don’t think too hard about those long words I used. You still have that smelly cow’s udder to squeeze so you can make a crappy living off of selling that milk … to the city folk who can afford to buy it.
…PS: Face!
“Grab a burger … Fresh Real food…”
To paraphrase Stalag17, “you Americans… So amusing”
@Aryugaetu; WTF!? What’s it to you if people CHOOSE to live in cities!? Maybe you should take your cow-tipping cornhole offline and get back to banging sheep.
Jesus you’re a moron. If you are advising that people go to smaller towns to buy their ipads then do that. Instead you attacked people for living in cities, when the cities drive the economy of your country and without them your small towns wouldn’t even have a Verizon or AT&T store.
If everyone did move to your paradise of a town, where you can get ‘fresh’ burgers galore (you fat c*nt), it would cease to be a small town wouldn’t the very thing you love.
Retard.
YOU ARE NOT TO BRIGHT ARE YOU. THOSE STORES MAY HAVE HAD SOME WHEN YOU SHOWED UP, BUT THEY MOST LIKELY ONLY HAD ABOUT 5 SHIPPED TO THEM. BEST BUY IN A SMALL TOWN ONLY GOT LIKE 10, SO I KNOW SOME VERIZON STORE IN THE MIDDLE OF NO WHERE DIDN’T GET MANY.
I haven’t left Manhattan in months. Cornfields are boring. Thank you.
Walked into a Best Buy in Springfield NJ at 3:10PM and was the first in line. They said they had tons and would let me buy 2. They turned out to have very limited stock and only let me get one. They had no 32GB 3G’s and it got pretty ugly after the second half of the line was told no more after being told they had plenty.
Still have iPads in Austin at 6th street. The line is growing though
Abilene, Texas
Waited at Best Buy and then found out they did not receive any 3G, ran to ATT store got on list #14, they only received 10 and some customers bought 2. They ran out at customer # 7.
What good are long lines if your customers get upset with you. I love Apple’s technology, but their people skills need work. According to instructions – ATT was a fiasco.
It was crazy – they couldn’t open ‘THE BOX’ until 5:00. They did not know what they had received. I left there at 5:45 for ATT to hand out 10 iPad2’s to 7 people. The second person was still there as I left.
My local Best Buy (smaller town, but just up the street from me) had just 15 units, which were all claimed by people waiting in line before 5pm. Left empty-handed. A friend went to a different Best Buy about 10 min away and was able to get an iPad and said there were about 80+ people in line that all got tickets to buy one.
I’d bet that Apple decided to launch a little early with a limited supply of iPads in order to manufacture the appearance of incredibly high demand. Good plan, but it seems like a lot of people were screwed out of buying one when they were more than willing to do so.
Personally, I can wait until I can get the model I want from the retailer I want (and get the Best Buy Reward Zone points to use towards future purchases), but it still sucks to have to wait.
in my corner of Eastern Washington (state) the closest retail Apple Stores are all a 3hr drive away (Seattle, Portland, or Spokane).
so I was hunting the other outlets. Of the two Targets close by I waited in line at the #2 spot from 11:30-2:00p. at 2:00p they told us they’d found out they weren’t actually getting any. and they directed us to the other Target which had only 5 units. i called and the 5 they had were all 64gb White wifi models.
so i headed to Best Buy. had my niece tag along so i could get one for my and my wife. we were #5&6 in line there. they ended up only having 20 units, 5 of the three black wifi models, and 5 of the 16gb white model.
luckily, we got what came for. but there was seriously way more interest in it. a lot of people got turned away at those stores.
I booked my online on apple store 15mins after 1am PST. told it would arrive in 3-5days. Booked a cover. Told its being shipped over. Then received an email, told my Ipad2 stock had ran out and they cancelled my order.
So now I’m stuck with an green cover without an ipad.
Thanks Apple. That’s clever.
BestBuy in Bloomington, Illinois seemed to have plenty in stock – I was probably about 75th in line (about halfway) and noticed when I got my “ticket” that they still had plenty of the model I wanted (White 64 AT&T). Lots of friendly Mac-using, iPad-1-owning people around me. My biggest disappointment – No Navy Leather Smart Covers. Plenty of pink and blue pastel vinyl, no thank you. So I went to Apple’s online store – 2-3 weeks to ship for Smart Covers! I hope that’s an exaggeration.
happened to be near a Walmart at around the right time and thought I’d stop in. Got my first iPad after being 5th in line. One per customer only I would have been gifting a few folks today. Oh well.
Typing on my new baby now. Love this thing!
I was able to pre-order my iPad 2 via phone at MacConnection at 2pm Pacific Time. Although they won’t have any in stock until next week, I saved $83 in sales tax with free shipping. They are the largest mail order Authorized Apple Dealer in the world so I know they are on Apple’s short list of 3rd party sources who will get stock first post launch weekend next week. 😉
i was lucky. I went to an Apple store in Allentown PA at 4 pm and turned away right away at the sight of around 300 people waiting in line. I then went to the best buy across the street. They had around 40 people in line but they still had enough iPads for me and a few others that showed up after me. They didn’t have any 16 gb versions but they did have the 32 wifi version I wanted and an hour of waiting later I got my iPad 2!
BOOM!
Bet apple pushes back the launch date for the ipad 2 in europe now.
End of may at the earliest now I reckon!
i returned from the Pasadena store about two hours ago…they only had the black 64 GB iPad 2 for Verizon…I guess I’ll try again tomorrow morning…looking for a 16GB AT&T version.
Hey paul, I am just curious. Why does it matter to you whether you get the AT&T version or the Verizon version? I got the AT&T version because I travel out of the country and AT&T’s GSM is much more compatible world wide. I’m also grandfathered in on the unlimited data plan. But were it not for those 2 reasons, I would be just as likely to go with Verizon. Your thoughts please.
Paul, I got to the Pasadena store, a bit before 10:00 AM (Saturday). The line was about half a block long. The Apple employee who came out when the store opened at 10:00 reported, as you say, that they had only the 64 GB Verizon model in stock. Sounded as though they had a fair supply of these. She was very pessimistic that they would be getting many additional iPad 2s in today’s shipment. There is no Sunday shipment. So you might want to hold off until Monday. Despite her discouraging words, many of the people continued to wait in line hoping that she might be wrong. It’s ironic that after all the complaining about the AT&T network, it appears to be the first choice among iPad 2 3G purchasers (and would-be purchasers).
As of 9pm last night the apple store in Memphis was sold out of everything except the verizon 64 gig.
just got email from apple that iPad number 2 just shipped. I bought it online from the apple site at 4am (thank you insomnia). Written from iPad 2 at a Starbucks. This thing rocks!
Waited in line last night at the Easton Apple store in Columbus, OH for 90 minutes and when I finally made it in, the only 3G models were white 64 gig verizon models. More than I wanted to pay, but after waiting that long, I had to go home with something! I did stop at an AT&T store before going to the Apple store, and the woman at the door said only one AT&T store in Columbus got iPads and they only got 4.
this is just crazy…people is crazy! why do they still buying iPad 2s WiFi-3G when AT&T and Verizon are offering miserable and expensive data plans, my only guess is that those 500,000 iPads sold in the first day because all these people were grandfathered with AT&T unlimited data plans or they just simply wanted a wifi version! I was one of the first buyers when the iPad 1 were launch hoping to get the unlimited data plan from AT&T only when I need it, an as they promise to be when they first announced the data plans for iPad 1… But oh well they change the plan to a miserable 2 GBs so dirty move AT&T!! Now thanks to that I won’t buy an iPad 2! And I really hope that all iPad owners who wants the unlimited data plans back do the same and show AT&T , Apple and now Verizon that we want the unlimited data plans back ASAP!! So now you know people if you are planning to buy an iPad 2 but you do not like the current data plans, Stop! And don’t buy if yet! Let’s put some pressure on this greedy companies until they bring back the plans we want!! If you like my comment please click like it!
At closing – the Anchorage Best Buy (Dimond) had a handful of 16-GB black wi-fi units. Everything else gone.
Best Buys across Long Island, NY today are all sold out with a 2-3 week preorder available for a $100 deposit. Units sold out last night. My local Best Buy seemed to have faired better than most of the other stores, Apple stores included, with quantity and selection. The line looked to hold over 200 people and I didn’t notice anyone on line getting turned away. This reflects a HUGE increase over the line of people last year that waited for the original iPad, which might have totaled 10-15.