The new iPad went on sale in the US, with Apple fans queuing at the company’s stores across the country to be among the first to snap up the coveted tablet computers.
Apple began selling the iPad 2, which was unveiled by chief executive Steve Jobs last week, as sales opened online overnight and at Apple’s 236 US stores.
Estimated shipping times for iPads ordered at Apple’s online shop went from a few days to a few weeks, indicating strong demand by people who didn’t want to face queues at real world stores.
“I suspect they will sell more iPads this time around than last time around,” Gartner analyst Van Baker said.
“I am not seeing much shape up in the form of competition, so I have to continue to believe they are going to be pretty dominant.” A line of people, including some who camped out overnight swathed in rain gear and equipped with chairs and big umbrellas, formed around the block outside Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York City.
First in line was Hazem Sayed, an applications developer who had purchased his coveted spot from Amanda Foote, an entrepreneurial 20-year-old from Florida who staked her claim outside Apple on Wednesday, then auctioned the place on Craigslist and by word of mouth.
The iPad 2, which is one-third thinner, nearly 15 per cent lighter and faster than the model released in April 2010, will be available in around two dozen other countries later this month.
Mingda Zhong, 18, a student from Nanjing, China, said that even the original iPad is rare at home. “You cannot buy the iPad 1 very easily,” he said.
“Most Chinese do not have it.”
About 50 people near the head of the long iPad 2 queue of outside the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco were there for a company that evidently intended to send the tablets back to China for resale at hefty mark-ups.
Besides the size and weight, the other major improvement to the touchscreen tablet computer is the addition of front- and rear-facing cameras that allow users to take still pictures and video and hold video conversations.
Apple sold 15 million iPads last year, bringing in $10 billion in new revenue and creating an entirely new category of consumer electronics devices.