India has been a dumping ground (this phrase has become such a cliché) for Apple – Whether it was iPhone’s or iPad’s. Indians have officially received these much sought after gadgets when the world was close to getting their next generation versions.
However, it looks that this trend may break with iPad 2. Although, there is no official confirmation on this – reports on the some of the sites suggest that India will not have to wait for months to get iPad 2. According to CIOL report, iPad 2 launch announcement for India will come as soon as March End or April! It also says that a senior manager with Apple partner company has confirmed the same.
More than 700,000 iPad 2 have flown off the shelf of Apple stores within 2 days of announcement and thousands of consumers have still been able to get their hands on it due to severe shortage.
Although, the India launch can still be called as rumour, the chances of it being true are quite high. If you look at the Apple Indian website, it is already featuring iPad2 on the homepage. This did not happen for months for either iPhone or iPad launch earlier.
Another reason why Apple may have decided to launch iPad 2 earlier is because unlike its predecessor, iPad 2 does have lot of competition on plate. Literally every large computer manufacturer has launched or in the process of launching their tablets in India.
It would also be interesting to watch at what price iPad 2 gets launched in India – I think if the prices are less than 30k (for their 16GB version), it should witness pretty good sales in India.
Although Notion Ink does not think tablet market in India is matured enough, other tablet manufacturers are making a beeline for their launch in India.
Just to see if we can get any updates, we called up few Apple dealers as well as their central toll free numbers, but no one really gave us any launch dates.
What do you think ? Will iPad 2 be launched in India ?
