Apple have done extremely well with US sales of the iPad, though let’s not forget that the US is Apple’s biggest market. Even so the iPad tablet computer is now available for sale worldwide.
Today it has officially gone on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Japan was the first to receive the units according to the Wall St Journal.
So how well will the iPad do around the world and will Apple be able to replicate the success they’ve had stateside?
The tablet is bound to sell well in Western Europe where such technology, and Apple, are very popular. Apple may well struggle to find a market further afield though in markets such as Japan and the far east.
What’s not going in its favour are a few things including the much publicised last of Adobe Flash support, it’s weight and the price. In the UK it will sell for between £429 and £699, which is quite expensive for something that’s limited in functionality (for instance there’s no printing support) and can’t and won’t be used in the same way a similarly priced laptop, or considerably cheaper netbook will.
I’m still not convinced personally that the iPad will be the sucess Apple is hoping for. There’s certainly a great deal of goodwill out there for it at the moment, and it’s done the most important thing it could have and kickstarted the tablet market.
Apple have a history of reinvigorating markets and have done so with all-in-one PCs, MP3 players and smart phones.
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I saw an iPad on Wednesday, a colleague got one from America. Seems like a big iPhone to me, even the UI is the same as the iPhone. It is about the size of a netbook, with the only advantage over a netbook being that it has a touch screen. I’m not an Apple fan, so suffice to say, I don’t like it (I don’t want Apple deciding what applications I can and can’t install on my devices and if I want to look at Porn, I can. Just because Steve Jobs is sexually repressed doesn’t mean we all are).