Apple today announced that iPad 2, the second-generation of its third post-PC device, will go on sale in 25 additional countries this Friday, March 25. iPad 2 will be available at Apple retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers at 5 p.m. local time, and online through the Apple Store beginning at 1 a.m. Apple today also announced that all models of iPad 2 will be available in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and additional countries in April.
“While competitors are still struggling to catch up with our first iPad, we’ve changed the game again with iPad 2,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “We’re experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the US, and customers around the world have told us they can’t wait to get their hands on it. We appreciate everyone’s patience and we are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”
iPad 2 features an entirely new design that is 33 percent thinner and up to 15 percent lighter than the original iPad, while maintaining the same stunning 9.7-inch LED-backlit LCD screen. iPad 2 features Apple’s new dual-core A5 processor for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics and now includes two cameras, a front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime and Photo Booth, and a rear-facing camera that captures 720p HD video, bringing the innovative FaceTime feature to iPad users for the first time. Though it is thinner, lighter, faster and packed with new features, iPad 2 still delivers up to 10 hours of battery life that users have come to expect.
iPad 2 with Wi-Fi will be available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK on March 25 for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model, $699 (US) the 64GB model. iPad 2 with Wi-Fi + 3G will be available for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad 2 will be available in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and additional countries in April, and in many more countries around the world in the coming months. Further international availability and pricing will be announced at a later date.
iMovie and GarageBand for iPad apps are available for $4.99 (US) each from the App Store on iPad or via the iTunes App Store. The Smart Cover is available in a range of colors in vibrant polyurethane for $39 (US) or rich leather for $69 (US).
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: If Apple spreads their meager iPad 2 supply any thinner…
Seriously, they can’t adequately supply Omaha, but they’re going to launch in 25 countries? What are they going to do ship 25 iPad 2 units, one to each country? Either that, or they’ve been sitting on a stockpile and having U.S. customers line up at 4am for the last week and a half as a publicity stunt. Neither option is very palatable or acceptable. Paging Dr. Cook, Dr. Tim Cook, operations genius…
Let’s hope instead that Apple experienced huge, unexpected (for some unknown reason) levels of demand, but now they’ve somehow magically increased production to the point where they can now satisfy 26 countries around the world by this Friday.
Little did we know that yesterday, all of Apple’s supply chain woes ended forever as they brought their newest innovation online: the iReplicator.
Apple just isn’t making any sense these days at all. Who is running the show around there??
Just because you don’t understand it does not mean the don’t have a plan. I’m sure they put a a plan in place before the launch and they are following that plan. That is what good businesses do, they just don’t throw things at the wall and see if they stick. As for estimating the demand, It’s is an educated guess and everything else you learn in economics classes about supply an d demand. You can never be exactly accurate but to still have an overselling demand is not a bad thing.
Obviously, no one does it better unless you think those two-for-one specialist do it better.
I can understand the frustation for shortages, but I don’t think we can make assumsumpts and judgements about apple at this time. There is probably a lot going on and we outsiders don’t know or have information about.
I think ramping production of a product takes time and it follows a process. Perhaps, they are opening up more production lines and are getting more efficient at manufacturing. They continue to learn and improve production since they started production a few months. It takes time to train and for workers at the plants to get proficient at what they do.
I doubt Apple wants frustated customes and they can’t snap a finger and produce millions of products. Production and capacity can change overtime and I think they make decisions they think are the best based on this data. Its not easy and I don’t think most of us are as smart as Apple’s Managements on this.
Will March 25th still be part of this quarter? or will the 1st day of international launch be included in sales reported for this quarter? I know the quarter ends on March 25th but don’t remember if it is inclusive of the date or not?
I disagree with MDN’s constant griping about the supply trickle. Middle school economics taught us about a little thing called the law of supply and demand. Simply, if the supply exceeds the demand, the price goes up and if demand exceeds supply, the price goes down.
Complain all you want about the “trickle” of iPad 2s to the consumer (not much unlike the iPhone 4s or iPad 1s after launch), but one thing Apple has done is completely ignored the law of supply and demand. People lining up for weeks and salivating all around the world to get one, and NO price increase?
Plus, by getting as many as possible to as wide an area as possible, Apple has further flummoxed the vaporware producers. They talk about their amazing products with all these specs and features, meanwhile I’m standing in line waiting for and watching an actual device walk by me out of the mall.
No one likes shortages, but look at the price of superbowl
Tickets (because of short supply) or superbowl ads (for the same reason).
While inconvenient, no one who does not have the time/money is standing around in line for the iPad. It’s not like the soviet grocery store where you’re in line for food that you cannot live without. This is a luxury/convenience item that might improve productivity, but mostly is just incredibly cool.
*Oops, mistyped the supply/demand law. Supply > Demand = -$; Supply < Demand = $.
Actually, Supply & Demand have affected prices; on Ebay and all the other resellers. There the going prices for an iPad 2 is in excess of US$1000. You may justifiably hate scalpers, just like Superbowl ticket scalpers, but they prove that the laws of economics have not been repealed.
I’ll be waiting until the backlight bleeding issues get resolved anyway, so no rush on my part.
I to would rather first sell to the USA. However, I will get my 3rd and 4th iPads later this year. Apple is an international supplier of products and services. How many years (decades) did we (the Mac users) have to look for the Mac OS version months or years after the Microsoft Windows OS version was released.
Soon it will be all Apple world wide. If you want to see a Windows PC one can be seen (with it’s Blue Screen of death) in the Smithsonian museum.
Uhh, well MDN, either that or Apple is just evenly distributing the iPads around the world so that every country has an equal chance of getting them. While having long lines for iPads certainly does generate hype, I don’t think the idea that Apple is using US customers as such while holding an unbalanced amount of supply is very accurate. More than likely, they had only a certain amount of supply and aliquoted a specific number of iPad 2’s to be used for the US, and they stuck hard with this number. Apple has to get the iPad 2s to the whole world and not just the US so they can start generating buzz around the whole world, and not just the US.
Go Apple!
I think Apple has always had inventory allocated to the international launch countries. The supply has always been fragmented, so it’s not going to change now.
When they launch in HK, that’s when the grey market shifts out of the US.
“When they launch in HK, that’s when the grey market shifts out of the US.” – most insightful comment so far.
As an American living abroad, I think most of my countrymen forget how americentric the web can appear, and while the US market got first dibs at a great piece of the pie, the real growth markets for Apple products is in Europe and especially Asia.
Controlling the grey market in these countries and satisfying growing demand for product is the honorable thing to do – Apple fans have been waiting patiently for a month, but that doesn’t mean we starve until the US gets fat on supply. Be fair to everyone, and I’m sure Apple will be.
C’mon MDN, you know better…
You know that the way to increase demand is to constrain supply…
Harley – Davidson does it every year, and now Apple has caught on to the technique.
Well, that’s great – for them. It would be great for me if mine that was ordered a couple weeks ago would just arrive – right in California.
Must be someone at MDN hasn’t gotten his iPad 2 yet.
People waiting in line fall into three categories:
(1.) The unemployed. Buy one, resell it, make a profit, come back the next day.
(2.) Those who enjoy the spectacle of it all.
And should they be whining about Apple’s struggle to sate rampant demand, that’s because they lack the single brain cell it took to spend 10 minutes ordering one online on March 11. Got mine a week ago.
Am I happy to live in Shanghai, 3 of my buddies already bought their new iPads from the local dealer (not the Apple Store), and a Apple sales guy said there are probably over 7000 of them in town.
NEWS FLASH: The world does NOT revolve around Omaha.
The demand for the first iPad surprised everyone… including Apple. Anticipating equal or greater demand, Apple produced much more iPad 2’s for its launch. But again the demand exceeded their (and our) expectations.
It has been estimated that demand was not just more than for the iPad 1, but that it was about 3-times as much.
During the first weekend of sales for the iPad 1 blew everyone away with approximately 300,000 sold (the biggest launch of ANY consumer device in history). During the first weekend of US-only sales of the iPad 2, it has been estimated that up to 1 million units were sold.
Apple is a good company, but they are not miracle workers. There is no way that they could have met that demand unless they stockpiled for months (setting the introduction back for those months). Of course they would also have to have known the future and foreseen that there would have been 3-times the demand for the iPad 2… Hindsight is always 20/20 😉
Apple obviously planned for a worldwide release schedule with certain numbers of iPad 2’s allocated for each part of the world.
Are you suggesting that the rest of the world’s allocation be given to the US, just so that you can get your Ipad 2 a little bit faster?
Is it so difficult to wait a few weeks to get your iPad 2, if you weren’t fast enough to get one from the initial allocation for the US?
Get real.
Dead on.
I’ll just go right ahead and say it: MDN is my favourite Mac News site because of exactly the thing that pisses me off in this article – the MDN Take.
They’re (generally) witty, funny, to the point, above average smart and generally well balanced (even if ever so gently balanced towards our favourite tech company)
But DUDES.
Enough with the big baby whining! jeeeesh
You got a gazzillion iPads for launch, ate them all in one WE and now you got none left. Dr. Tim Cook “operations genius” put aside a couple of iPads to us other COUNTRIES (not towns or villas…. “Omaha” SERIOUSLY???) apart from your gazillion. Now you want the gazillion AND our 50 units??? Get off!!
If Dr. MDN Take witty comebacks genius really thinks that Apple is more worried about successfully meeting the demand of Omaha instead of say, FRANCE (and I don’t even like the frenchie all that much), UK, or please-make-it-more-than-10-units-this-time-we-always-get-screwed-Portugal, you are in a serious need for a reality check.
Apple Inc doesn’t need to stack the numbers by rushing the international launch. It must be a combination of not wanting to delay rollout by a month like last year and at least some degree of supply confidence. As KenC implies, some of those still n lines today are there because others before them routed their purchases to the grey market. That and staggering demand. Ramping up to 3 or 4 million of these a month is no easy task. A few more production plants would help. But I agree that on the surface it doesn’t look like the customer is #1.
Maybe the end of the fiscal quarter is a factor. It ends Saturday night so any online orders before then would probably be booked as sales in this quarter even though delivery is down the line. Just like booking sales when a reseller accepts the product in their inventory.
Come on, MDN, admit. If Apple had reneged on its commitment to launch internationally on March 25th, then you would have been all over them. Instead, they stick with their commitment and save some inventory for our fellow Apple fans across the water and you whine because we don’t have enough iPad 2’s to satisfy demand in the U.S.
MDN has griped a lot in recent months about Mossberg’s alleged “Android Tourette’s Syndrome.” But MDN seems to have acquired a “diss Apple” syndrome. I can only assume that you are overly sensitive about being accused of Apple favoritism, and are now trying to balance things out. That will only work if you legitimately criticize Apple. What you are doing now is like an NBA ref attempting to atone for a bad call with another bad call. Two bad calls don’t make a good call.
Save your Apple criticism for when it is warranted.
Say what??? The iPad 2 isn’t even available in California yet!
I’m happy to see this. It seems to me that having overseas sales will free up many iPad 2s in the US because the incentive to pay people to wait in line for iPads that are going to be shipped overseas is substantially reduced.
You might still have to wait in line but the people in front of you are more likely to buy a single iPad 2 in many different configurations rather than all the WiFi and AT&T models 2 at a time.
Let’s see, do we piss off MDN or the rest of the world?
It must have been one hell of a decision Apple executives had to make. I’m thinking MDN got the short end of the stick because of their political leanings.
i think you guys in the US who are passing all these comments are missing a balanced perspective ..
consider this .. when a new Apple product goes on sale in the US – an iPhone – there are buyers in India, Thailand, Middle east that are sending people to get one ON THE DAY that it is launched, buy it, and FLY back immediately and deliver at insane prices !!! think an iPhone for 4 or 5000 $ ! Or the iPad 2 at 3000$ !!
i got a call today to offer it to me the 32 Gb for 1800$ !!
so Apple knows that ! and all of us back seat drivers can basically shut up and just let the drivers drive – our commentary only shows how little we know and how ‘stooopid’ we are in terms of understanding their end of the issues to be handled ..
… in an ideal world – supply and demand would magically get balanced and production would happen by the swish of ‘harry potters wand’. Do you have ANY concept of what it would take to not only create but balance production for an item that the WHOLE WORLD would want ?
isn’t it time we all grew up and wasted less time on such matters that ( we understand ..! & ) deserve our time .. !
I agree with MDN. Once USA citizens have been fed, then the rest of the world may have an opportunity to eat, but not until then.
/s
Still no local pricing announced here in Oz.
Just a quick note to the complainers….. Let’s say Apple had doubled its production rate for the iPad2 compared to the iPad1. That’s a massive increase and a huge corporate risk to take for both Apple and its suppliers.
Yet demand would still outstrip supply. At some point you have to make a decision based on how sensible it is to take perverse risks to both your financial and supply chain efficiency while still delivering some level of satisfaction to your customers all around the world…
I spoke too soon. Aussie pricing announced here: http://www.apple.com/au/pr/library/2011/03/22ipad.html
Prices look pretty good. Considering that the $A and $US have been trading at around parity for a while, Apple Australia have only added $30 to the Oz price after allowing for our 10% GST.
The whiny tone of the MDN take is a little embarrassing. Grow a pair.