Yesterday was delivery day for my pre-ordered iPad. I haven’t had time to play around with it much so I’m going to write a review in a couple of days. But I can definitely say that Apple are having serious delivery problems with the iPad in Europe.

I was supposed to meet a friend after work and had some time to kill. So I went to one of the major electronics stores in central Berlin to check out what was going there in terms of iPad hype. I was ready to take photos of happy Apple disciples holding up their new toys like relics. But as David Bowie said, this is not America.

First of all, I saw absolutely no advertising for the iPad inside the store. This made me wonder whether they were even selling it. So I went upstairs to the Apple corner where I was welcomed by the following sign

Dear customers, for iPads please refer to our customer service representatives. Maximum items per customer: 1 while stock lasts. Reorders are possible of course. Delivery date unknown. Your MediaMarkt team.

So we are taken back to the age of food stamps here.

Anyhow, I talked to some of the sales people there. The first guy said that all of them had been sold in the morning already. He wasn’t allowed to tell me how many they had on stock. So I asked him if it was more than a hundred because I didn’t see any advertising for it. He raised his eyebrows and replied “I don’t think we’re going to be selling any more of them in the next weeks.”

If you ask me, I don’t think they had more than 50 in one of the most central electronics stores in a European capital. All this means that Apple are pretty much out of stock because they got overwhelmed by their own success in the U.S.. This is also why they postponed the release date for Europe.

The bottom line is that the iPad is not going to be such a major game changer in Europe in the next weeks. They ruined their premiere and if competitors like neofonie with their WeTab or Dell with their Streak hurry up they can grab a big piece of the tablet market here.