Apple resellers get thousands of iPad requests

Apple is facing the rare incident of an advance sellout this week as a number of Norwegian resellers have had to stop their pre-order programs for the iPad. Eplehuset (Apple House) has told its customers that "crazy interest" has led it to stop sales in advance. Fellow Apple reseller Humac has also quietly pulled the iPad, as it still has a category but no longer has active product pages.

It's believed that the sites took thousands of advance orders for the touchscreen device and that, unusually, the largest portion of orders skew heavily towards the more expensive 64GB iPad with 3G. Norwegian prices are also expected to be disproportionately high as a 16GB, Wi-Fi only iPad may cost 3790 Krone, or about $636.

Most retailers elsewhere in the world haven't taken pre-orders, making it difficult to gauge how reflective Norway's surprise may be of actual overall demand. However, the smaller population compared to some of Apple's larger markets suggests that unofficial pre-orders should be larger where they exist in the US.

A strong build-up isn't uncharacteristic for e-reader devices, as Barnes & Noble had to delay retail Nook sales for months. Such delays have usually been attributed to low production rather than sheer demand, however, and have rarely been given concrete numbers to gauge actual interest.

Also, such demand isn't known to have been seen before for tablet computers, which usually ship in lower numbers as a whole and are noticeably less common in Europe or the Americas than in southeast Asian countries like Korea. [via iPod1]

By Electronista Staff