Should we wait for iPad 3 rumours to get an iPad 2?

By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 04 May 2011 12:43

Opinion and Analysis

Apple’s latest digital masterpiece the iPad 2 went on sale in Australia on 26 March 2011. Here it is 4 May and you still can’t walk into a store and buy one off the shelf – what a joke!

Never being one to stand in line for the privilege of providing a vendor with their livelihood, like always I decided to give the latest fabled Apple product retail launch a miss. I thought that a few days down the track I would simply walk into a store and buy one – my mistake!

Apple may indeed be the king of innovative technology but it’s certainly no doyen of distribution.

Loyalists may make excuses by arguing that Apple was unprepared for the unprecedented demand for the iPad 2. If so, the answer in a word is – rubbish!

The demand for iPhone and its subsequent iterations has been just as high as iPad 2 – in fact higher. The supply problem was never this bad.

Some reports have argued that the mad rush for similar tablet components from Apple’s competitors has created a supply squeeze. Doesn’t the same argument hold true on a much greater scale for iPhone and Android phones, not to mention notebooks?

What components are we talking about? Processors, flash RAM, small touch sensitive screens? These components are being churned out by tens of millions every day in the factories of China – not Japan.

Apple has had its production supply chain well and truly sewn up since the advent of the iPhone and the new generation of Macs. Surely it must have been prepared for the demand for iPad 2?

Unfortunately for Apple the so-called astronomical demand for the iPad 2 is not translating into product moving off shelves. This problem is not just in Australia but in dozens of countries around the world.

Apple Stores are sold out, JB Hi-Fi stores are sold out, David Jones is sold out, Harvey Norman is sold out, Apple resellers are sold out.

But there are still ways to get one.

You can pay up front and order online, and wait the 1-2 weeks of shipping time Apple Australia says it will take for an iPad 2 to be delivered to your door.? Of course, Apple is careful to cover itself in case it takes longer by stating that delivery time may vary.

Think about this for a minute, you’re paying several hundreds of dollars for something in advance with no guaranteed delivery date.

Then there's Apple's "reserve and pick up" section of its website.

If you visit this site at 9pm precisely, with your Apple ID at the ready, you can snag whatever iPad 2 you want for pickup the next day from your closest Apple Store - but if you dither, you'll probably find that by 9.01pm all available iPad 2's for that day are gone.? Now that’s service!

Thus, the iPad 2 retains its "sold out" allure while being available within 1-2 weeks online (maybe) or "the next day" if you can "reserve and pick one up" at precisely the right time (who’s the time keeper) at Apple's site.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could just go into an Apple Store or another retailer right now and pick an iPad 2 up? It sure would, and it would make millions of people very happy.

But hey, they’re Apple and they’re enriching our lives with their wonderful new products. We’re only the poor schmucks who stand in line to make them rich.

View the original article here