The First iPad — and the Two-Month Wait Outside the US

The first iPad was announced on 27 January 2010 and went on sale in the US on Saturday 3 April 2010 (Wi-Fi model); the Wi-Fi + 3G model followed in the US on 30 April. Japan got it on 28 May 2010, on the same day as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Japan had been listed among the next countries from the start, but that "next" slipped twice, and in the end Japan waited about eight weeks longer than the US.

Apple was open about why. In a statement on 14 April 2010 it said it had delivered more than 500,000 iPads in the first week, but that demand was far higher than predicted and would likely keep exceeding supply for several weeks, so it was postponing the international launch by a month.

How the dates moved

In the US, the Wi-Fi + 3G model was delivered to pre-order customers on Friday 30 April and went on sale in Apple's stores that day from 5 p.m. AT&T offered prepaid 3G data plans that could be activated and managed on the device.

The 7 May announcement also scheduled nine more countries — Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore — for July.

What was inside

The A4 was a chip Apple designed itself; the announcement described it as delivering processor and graphics performance together with up to ten hours of battery life.

On the software side, the iPad came with 12 new apps designed for it and ran almost all of the more than 140,000 apps then in the App Store, including ones already bought for an iPhone or iPod touch. On the same day Apple announced the iBooks app and its iBookstore, and an iPad SDK that let developers build Universal applications running on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch alike. The new kind of device arrived sitting on top of an existing pile of apps.

In the press release, Steve Jobs said: "iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before." Apple described it as thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook, and it synced with a Mac or PC over the same 30-pin to USB cable as the iPhone.

The Japanese launch

Pre-orders in Japan opened on 10 May, and the iPad went on sale on 28 May. Cellular service for the Wi-Fi + 3G model came from SoftBank Mobile. According to SoftBank's press release of 8 May, the 16 GB Wi-Fi + 3G model cost ¥58,320 paid outright with its flat-rate data plan, or ¥61,800 with a prepaid plan, and the 16 GB Wi-Fi model cost ¥48,800. The flat-rate plan was ¥2,910 a month after a 24-month discount.

How many sold

These are Apple's own figures. The first-day 300,000 combined pre-order deliveries, shipments to channel partners and sales in Apple's stores. The one million of early May was a US-only figure.

Where the iPad sits

The iPad began as a product that ran the apps people already had for the iPhone and iPod touch on a bigger screen. That was possible because the original iPhone of 2007 and the App Store of 2008 had already gathered both the apps and the users. For the company see Apple; for the wider story, the mobile timeline. The touch technology is explained under multi-touch.