The international iPad launch has been postponed by a month, due to unexpected demand in the US. “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.”
When will all companies stop using this old marketing trick ? “See, there’s no more, you really should have bought it”.
It just sounds like every new risky product launch uses this. I can’t believe it still works.
Apple doesn’t usually play these games, at least, not as far as I know. When they run out of a product it is usually because an update is coming, or in fact there actually is a shortage. But maybe I’m wrong, they aren’t the best company in the world (see recent developers cross-platform decision).
When the iPhone 1G was released, I remember there was a shortage for a while in the US (it wasn’t released in too many places back then) which was actually a shortage. I think the iPods suffered similar problems, plus there was a shortage of HD’s too from memory…
I think the problem is that Apple left the iPad to the very last moment before the launch, so didn’t really have enough time to build up numbers…
I agree. With the iPad launch being labeled “one of the most carefully constructed hypes in history”, claims that the success has outhyped themselves sound unplausible.
Still I can understand that the production facilities have their limits to the available resources (material, workforce, time).
Or, it could be that selling 500,000 of them caught them by surprise, and it’ll take a while to shore up their stocks.
Companies have long used just-in-time inventory, which reduces waste and overstock. Dell pioneered it and Apple became a devout follower of the belief, having one of the lowest stock-times in the industry.
Even fanboys weren’t sure the iPad was going to be a hit. So far, it seems that it is.
Not Palm it seems who apparently has been stuffing the channel.