IPad 2 Sellout Sequel: This Time It's Global

March 28, 2011 at 3:33 am PT

Here’s some news sure to furrow the brows of tablet market hopefuls. Once exclusive to the States, iPad 2 stock-outs are now a worldwide phenomenon. Just two days after going on sale overseas, the successor to Apple’s original iPad is in tight supply in many of the countries where it’s just arrived at market and nowhere to be found in some of them.

Reports of stock-outs are widespread, coming in from Canada, Germany, Australia, and Great Britain, where the iPad 2 evidently sold out in 24 hours. An ATD reader in Paris tells me that both Apple Stores in the city–Opéra and Louvre–were sold out by weekend’s end. Another in the U.K. says Apple’s Regent Street Store–which, ironically, sits across the street from Nokia’s now shuttered flagship shop–had a line “so long I expected to see the Pied Piper at its head” (see video below courtesy of Only Gizmos).

Clearly, demand for the iPad 2 is as “amazing” abroad as it is at home. Which makes you wonder if some of those early sales estimates were a bit too conservative–bullish ones, too.

Tagged with: Apple, demand, digital, Digital Daily, hardware, innovation, international, Internet, iPad, iPad 2, John Paczkowski, sales, stock-outs

comments so far. Add yours.

http://twitter.com/slowbutlearning Billy Joe

That’s great aapl you get them all fired up and run out of product.
This should be easy for MMI to swoop in a gap the smart consumers after reveiwing the feature Xoom will easily be the winner and a 5 week wait and that’s all it will take.
Anonymous

Who cares

Xooms will sell a fraction of what Apple has sold.

Smart consumers have already made the smart choice.

But i bet you can get ALL the available apps to fit on a Xoom.
http://www.BarnesFamily.com/ davebarnes

So, my only question is:
Is Apple under-producing to create stockouts or are they producing as much as they can and the demand is overwhelming?
I guess we will find out on April 22 (approx).
$350AShareMakesMeHappy>8-D

Nobody gives a crap about the Xoom. Apple sold more iPad 2s in one weekend than Motorola will sell Xooms for the whole year. Motorola shares will continue to fall and the company will soon be bankrupt. No consumer wants to get stuck with a device from a defunct company, excepting yourself.

Most consumers would rather a month for an iPad 2 than purchase some crippled Android tablet with a beta OS by the name of Honeycomb. I hope the iPad 2 crushes the sales of all Android tablets and the RIM PlayBook. I’m hoping WebOS tablets are popular as I’d like to see WebOS notebooks, too.
$350AShareMakesMeHappy>8-D

I think we should wait to find out how many iPad 2s have been sold. I fully believe iPad inventory is being constrained by Foxconn’s build speed. I don’t believe Foxconn can possibly build more than 5 million iPads a month and that requires a full month. If 2.5 million consumers want an iPad 2 the first week of the month, they won’t all get one. That’s a simple logistics problem that won’t be able to be overcome by complaining that Apple doesn’t care about its customers or Apple is trying to stir up media hype. How many people even know the yield rates of the iPad 2 display to judge the reason for inventory shortages? It only takes one component to hold up production of a device.

So, unless Apple playing some psychological game with competitors, there’s no point in starving supply. They might just as well sell as many iPad 2s as they can as fast as they can so consumers only buy iPad 2s before they buy anything else.
Anonymous

Is Apple under-producing to create stockout?
The same question asked and pops up each time Apple sells out of their products. I’m sure the answer will be pretty much the same record breaking sales. If you don’t believe that, you still have several days to short AAPL before earnings release :P
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

Don’t they have mail-order in the UK? I’d never stand in a line that long knowing that they’d be out when and if I made it to the door.

Even in-store sales could be sped up by allowing you to just pay and go rather than having to wait for help from a “genius”.

I think to some extent these shortages are planned, but Apple is clearly selling a lot of these things.

Good on them. More of these devices out there the fewer people will feel they need to struggle with a Windows based computer.
Anonymous

Managing supply chain issues with 50% year-over-year growth is very difficult. Add in that the supply chain in question is 75 billion dollars per year and the task verges on impossible. Apple has managed this growth with only slight over-demand issues and no impact on customer satisfaction. In fact, Apple has had the highest customer satisfaction in the industry during it’s last five years of double digit per year growth.

It is amazing how easy Apple makes it look and how people take virtuoso performances totally for granted…
Anonymous

Managing 50% year over year growth in a 75 billion dollar supply chain is a near impossible task. All the while, Apple maintains the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry in the face of this rocket-ship growth curve.

It never ceases to amaze me how people take exceptional things for granted. Apple makes it look too easy…
Anonymous

The original poster was just kidding. He was telling a tale so fantastically improbable it makes you laugh so hard you spit whatever you are drinking halfway across the room.
Anonymous

It’s not reasonable to think they are underproducing.

The biggest question with Apple right now is can they produce enough product to keep up with their growth? Stock outs are bad news for Apple, not good news. Everybody already knows their products are popular.

Besides, even if they were manipulating things … why 5 weeks? That s more than a third of a quarter.

And inventory management is hard enough to do when your only goal is doing it right. The idea that they could also do a kind of fake PR with it is not reasonable.

And when it comes to PR, Samsung is the known liar.
Anonymous

You have it backwards. The people in line will get then that day in most cases. Apple hands out little cards representing stock and then sends the back f the line home when the cards run out. If you order online, you wait 4-5 weeks.
Anonymous

Or was supply just too constrained? Apple dealers I have spoken to in Australia told of receiving 5 iPads per suburban store. Five! Maybe Apple had production hiccups they didn’t want to mention – I can believe they wanted to sell out, to get just this sort of story run, but not so quickly.
Incidentally, love your “iPad 2 Sells Out” picture!

IPad 2 Sellout Sequel: This Time It's Global

comments so far. Add yours.

AllThingsD by Writer