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Apple delays global roll-out of the iPad

Australian and New Zealand iPad game developers, I hope you've managed to somehow secure your new shiny Apple-made tablet for development, because Apple has announced that it will delay the global roll out of the iPad by one month. The iPad was launched in North America on the 3rd of April, with a promised launch everywhere else (well, mainly Spain, UK, Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Italy and Switzerland) a few weeks later on the 28th.

Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming demand in the U.S, Apple are going to fulfil those needs first before giving other countries a chance on purchasing the wonder tablet. I guess you'll have to keep testing your work on the iPad SDK emulator for the time being.

From the Apple press release...

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.