Heavy US sales means international launch of iPad delayed by a month

Apple says that although it has “delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week” the demand for the iPad in sales and pre-orders is “far higher than we predicted”. The upshot of all these US sales? The international launch – that’s including us here in Europe folks – will be postponed by one month, until the end of May.

However, make a date in your diary as Apple says it will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10.

Full release can be found on CrunchGear.

I guess we’ll just have to go and get a WePad instead huh.

UPDATE: Vodafone, O2 and Orange have confirmed they will supply the iPad to customers in the UK from next month. No prices are yet available for mobile broadband access form any of the networks. Vodafone will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK”. O2 will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in the UK”. Orange will offer “dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in France, UK, Spain and Switzerland”. The mobile companies are lobbying Apple to tie iPads into their existing tariffs but Apple prefers the pre-pay deals so it looks like there will be a mixture of both.

Note by Robin Wauters:

At the recent unveiling of the iPhone OS 4.0, someone inquired about the success of the iPad in the U.S. potentially threatening the ‘late April’ launch date for the rest of the world. The response of Apple head honcho Steve Jobs to that question?

“No, we said we’re launching internationally later in April, and we’re launching later in April.”

For the record: that was merely six days ago.