iPad International Delay Is Sign That Apple Has Done It Again!

It's official. Those that doubted the Apple iPad is another Apple game changer like the iPhone can now eat their hats.

Apple's decision to delay the international launch of the iPad touch-screen tablet until the end of May in the wake of astronomical US sales is evidence of the market phenomenon that is the Apple iPad, said Apple resellers.

"Apple has hit it out of the park again," said Nick Gold, sales manager for Chesapeake Systems, one of the leading Apple Video VARs in the country. "I'm at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show and I am seeing iPads everywhere. Everyone is really jazzed about it."

Apple Wednesday said it has delivered a whopping 500,000 iPads in only one week. Not only that, Apple said it has taken a "large number" of pre-orders for the Apple iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

Gold said that analysts that were predicting that Apple would sell 3 million or 4 million iPads in 2010 are going to be way off the mark.

Apple, for its part, said "demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks."

Apple plans to announce international iPad pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on May 10.

Apple had previously said the iPad would be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. in late April.

One sign of the iPad's growing influence is the number of companies planning to unleash iPad applications.

"After selling almost 500,000 in the first few days, it's obvious that the numbers will exist for many killer apps -- and infrastructure companies -- to be a part of another successful Apple ecosystem," said Michael Oh, founder and CEO of Boston-based Apple reseller Tech Superpowers.

Next: Looking For The Next Killer App For The iPad

Oh said a number of Tech Superpowers customers are "talking to us about their ideas for the next 'killer app' for the iPad and us providing infrastructure services, including imaging, distribution, and repair."

At NAB, Gold said, there were many companies hopping on the Apple iPad bandwagon. For example, he said, ToolsOnAir, an Apple ISV, showed off an application that puts TV production broadcast management capabilities on an Apple iPad.

Gold said that the success of the iPad is a sign of the appetite for simple technology tools. "This says something very interesting about where we are at with our relationship with technology," he said. "For the last 20 to 30 years if you were using a computer it was like a high priesthood. You had to be a nerd. It was almost like a secret society of people that knew how a computer really worked."

"With the iPad and the iPhone, Apple has become the first technology company to release products that are a tool for people like an ax or a hammer," he said. "You shouldn't have to know all the gory technical details of how they work on the inside. It's just a tool. The software is the key. You just touch it. The keyboard and the mouse are gone."

Oh said he sees the Apple iPad breaking into corporations just like the Apple iPhone and CEOs and other top level executives using the Apple devices. He sees those top executives looking to use iPhones and iPads in business scenarios like point of sales (POS) systems.

"I think you'll see CEOs and VPs of SMBs and Enterprises thinking: 'Hey, why can't we make a POS system work like this?' or 'Why can't I just put 100 of these in my warehouses instead of a custom hardware/software solution being pitched to me for millions of dollars?'"