iPad international launch postponed by one month

Apple has delayed the launch of their iPad tablet by one month. The reason for this delay has been cited to be the excessive demand for the iPad in the US market.

According to Apple, they have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during the first week and the demands have been far higher than what they have expected and they believe it will continue to exceed their supply for the next several weeks. It is for this reason that they have postponed the international launch date by one month until the end of May. The announcement of the international pricing and the beginning of taking online pre-orders will be on Monday, May 10th.

All those of you who have been waiting for the iPad to officially arrive in India would have to wait one more month. Turns out the iPad has become too popular for its own good.

Here's the official statement from Apple:

"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."

Update: Turns out the above mentioned dates may not be applicable for those of us in India. The countries which would be getting the iPad by the end of May have got their respective Apple web pages updated to reflect the news (Click here to check the Apple Canada web page for the iPad). But the Indian web page remains as is. This could either mean that the Apple India web page hasn't been updated yet or worse, that the iPad won't be getting here by end of May. Considering how long it took for the iPhone 3GS to get here, we would advise you to not hold your breath.