Alongside Apple announcing its plans to bring the iPad to 9 more countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK on Friday, May 28th, it also announced that the device would be available for pre-order in these countries, both online and in-store, starting today.
A little over two months after the device officially launched in the US, and pushed back due to reported demand exceeding Apple’s initial expectations, the iPad will be available to pre-order in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK later today, with the device already available to be pre-ordered in Australia.
The iPad, which comes in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+ 3G flavours is the company’s first ever attempt at a ‘tablet computer’. Running iPhone OS and modeled around the success of the iPhone and iPod touch, the device runs all 194,411 iPhone apps, as well as iPad specific applications which developers are creating and submitting to the App Store, as we speak.
In preparation of offering up the iPad for pre-order in these countries, Apple has today taken each of the 9 corresponding online stores offline.
See below for direct store links:
Australia – apple.com/au/store [LIVE]
Canada – apple.com/ca/store [LIVE] Thanks Patrick!
France – apple.com/fr/store [LIVE]
Germany – apple.com/de/store [LIVE]
Italy – apple.com/it/store [LIVE]
Japan – apple.com/jp/store [LIVE]
Spain – apple.com/es/store [LIVE]
Switzerland – apple.com/chde/store [LIVE]
UK – apple.com/uk/store [LIVE]
[Update] – Apple Australia is the first store to have come back up, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 2] ”“ Apple Japan was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 3] – Apple UK was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 4] – Apple Spain was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 5] – Apple Germany was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 6] – Apple Switzerland was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 7] – Apple Italia was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 8] – Apple France was next, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
[Update 9] – Apple Canada was last, with the iPad now available to pre-order here.
With Apple having already shifted roughly 1M iPad units in the US alone, it will be interesting to see how the first stage of the company’s international launch plays out today.
The second half of the international launch is expected to take place in July, with Apple making the device available to customers in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore. Countries not listed will unfortunately have to wait until later this year to get their hands on the device.
Stay tuned to this post as we’ll be continually updating it with news of the international iPad pre-orders, throughout today.
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