As usual China seem to be the last to be invited to the Apple knees up! This time around Chinese Apple fans on the mainland will be left waiting to get the newest version of the iPad!
At the iPad Keynote earlier the on sale dates for various countries was made public, with the earliest date to buy a new Retina display, quad core iPad being 16th March, which is a week on Friday.
The United States, Canada, UK, France , Germany, Japan, Singapore plus Hong Kong and many other countries will be the first to get their hands on the new iPad (officially), while the rest of the world needs to wait unit 23rd March.
However, left out from the grand scheme of things is Apple’s largest growing market, and current cash cow! Yep, the release date for the new iPad in China has yet to be set!
Gizchina News of the week
This isn’t to say Chinese mainland customers won’t be able to buy a new iPad just yet, because they will via the grey market dealers, but for those who want to by an official release version of the new iPad they could be in for a long wait!
To rub salt further in to the wound, Hong Kong Apple stores, the closest market to mainland China, has the new iPad listed at HK$3888 which is likely to be up to $120 less than the retail price for the Chinese market!
And one more thing! There is also the fact that the new iPad features 4G LTE, great news for those living in places with 4G connectivity, unfortunately China isn’t one of them!
But there is some good news in that the current iPad 2 has received a price drop to 2988 Yuan here in China, which doesn’t really make up for it at all really….
