Despite mounting reports of iPad 2 shortages at Apple Stores across the U.S., Apple announced on Tuesday that it will go on sale in 25 additional countries on Friday, March 25.
The tablet will be available at Apple retail stores and select authorized resellers at 5 p.m. local time Friday, and online at 1 a.m., Apple said.
The lucky countries getting (supposedly) their second-generation iPads on Friday: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.
The prices — ranging from $499 for Wi-Fi-enabled model with 16GB memory to $829 for the Wi-Fi with 3G and 64GB — are the same as they are here in the States.
Apple also announced that the iPad 2 will be available in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and additional countries in April. (Last week, Apple confirmed that the company is postponing the iPad 2 launch in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.)
“We’re experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the U.S., and customers around the world have told us they can't wait to get their hands on it," Apple chief Steve Jobs, who unveiled the device on March 2, said in a statement announcing Friday's worldwide release. "We appreciate everyone’s patience and we are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”
That patience is growing thin for lots of iPad fans.
"I spent the better part of an hour waiting outside an Apple retail outlet in Center City Philadelphia only to be told, 50 minutes before the store was scheduled to open, that its promised overnight shipment of iPad 2s had not arrived," Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote in a blog post. "It was an early-morning scene that has been repeated nearly every day for the past 10 days at most of Apple's 236 U.S. retail stores."
Indeed, there have been similar reports by Apple Store customers from New York to Santa Monica in the last two weeks.
The bigger question, of course, is whether the shortage is an age-old marketing ploy to make it look like demand is exceeding supply.
A spokesperson for Apple did not immediately return a request for comment.
If this was Apple's tactic, though, it has exceeded its usefulness. Even hardcore Apple fanboys I've talked to have grown tired of waiting.
