Apple to delay UK iPad launch

Paul Nesbitt

Apple ran its first ever iPad TV commercial during a break in the US coverage of the Oscars, but ‘manufacturing bottlenecks’ will push back its UK launch from ‘late March’ to April, according one analyst familiar with the company’s manufacturing chain.

Apple’s US commercial promised that the iPad will arrive in the US on 3 April, but unusually for Apple, the company had previously intimated that the WiFi-only iPad would start shipping in the UK later this month, before its US release.

This rare example of the UK getting a new Apple product before the US now appears to have unraveled.

‘An unspecified production problem at the iPad's manufacturer, Hon Hai Precision, will likely limit the launch region to the US,’ wrote Canaccord Adams analyst, Peter Misek in a note to clients.

Misek predicted that Apple may have as few as 300,000 iPads ready for the launch date, rather than the one million he claimed it had planned.

‘It is also possible that, given the limited number of units available in March, the [UK] launch will be delayed for a month,’ wrote Misek.

So far Apple UK has yet to reveal UK pricing for the iPad, which 3G networks might support the device, or even what kind of network plans will be available. In the US Apple will release the 3G iPad as an unsubsidized platform, without a SIM, although it has teamed up with AT&T to offer a competitively priced 3G data plan.

In the UK O2 and Orange are almost certain to be the first networks to offer 3G data plans for the iPad. Indeed, Gemalto, a manufacturer of the new format Micro SIM cards that the iPad takes, said that both companies have purchased large volumes of the cards from it.

Watch the iPad TV commercial here.