Want an Apple iPad 3G to get a head start on your summer reading? Forget about it. You may have to wait weeks to get your hands on one of the hot new tablet computers.
Just three weeks after the 3G version of the iPad went on sale, a survey of 50 stores by Piper Jaffray found none had one in stock.
A team led by the investor research firm’s Apple analyst, Gene Munster, called stores around the country and found the supply of all iPad models scarce. Thirty-seven didn’t have an iPad while 13 only had the Wi-Fi-enabled model.
Munster told investors in a note that Apple stores were gathering waiting lists of prospective iPad buyers to be notified within four to seven days of availability, while online sales have a seven- to 10-day wait.
The shortage comes a week before Apple is set to launch the iPad internationally on May 28.
Although the iPad exceeded many projections, selling one million in just 28 days (boosted by the emergence of the 3G model at the end of April), the shortage could cause Apple to fall short of Wall Street projections.
“Given the international iPad launch on 5/28 and continued strong demand in the U.S., we expect supply constraints to last through the June quarter, reaching equilibrium in the mid-to-late September quarter,” Munster wrote.
Another research note by Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets, as published in media reports, estimates that Apple is selling a brisk 200,000 iPads per week in the U.S., falling in between the company’s Macintosh computer line, at 110,000 per week, and its iPhone 3G handsets, selling at 246,000 per week in the first quarter.
Abramsky suggested that iPad sales will take a 25 percent chunk out of sales of other Apple products and didn’t dismiss the idea that…