New iPad lands in India and eight other countries today
Apple's new tablet travels around the world to nine more countries today, adding up to a grand total of 56 different nations.
The new iPad arrives today in nine more countries, including Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa, and Thailand.
This marks the fourth phase of Apple's staggered rollout.
The new iPad debuted in the U.S., and nine other nations on March 16. The tablet travelled to an additional 25 countries, mostly throughout Europe, on March 23. And last Friday saw 12 more nations on the receiving end of the latest iPad.
The iPad is now available in 56 different countries, or 58 markets altogether if Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are included in the mix.
Sales of the tablet have been unsurprisingly strong. On Tuesday Apple revealed that it had sold 11.8 million iPads during its second fiscal quarter, a 151 percent jump from a year ago. Analysts, though, had been expecting slightly better, in the range of 12 million to 13 million.
"[We] can't make enough" iPads, Chief Financial Officer CFO Peter Oppenheimer said on Tuesday "[We're] selling as fast as we can make them."
One of the few countries that seems blase about the new iPad is India, at least according to one report.
Apple doesn't run any of its own stores in India yet. Instead, its products are sold by resellers and retailers with a wide range of brands.
At one Indian store today where the iPad wasn't even on display, the only sign of life waiting outside was a bull intent on getting a suntan, according to IBN Live.
Eventually one customer popped in about 30 minutes after the story opened, buying a 32GB iPad. But the store did tell IBN that around 100 customers had pre-ordered the new tablet.
Apple has long been struggling to gain traction in India but is still facing a lackluster market in the world's seventh largest country. Price is seen as a major factor. India is flooded with a huge number of rival tablets, according to IBN, many of them costing significantly less than even the cheapest iPad.
Wait times for the new iPad have fallen to five to seven business days in the U.S. and other markets. But consumers in the U.K. and other European countries still face a wait of one to two weeks.