Apple Inc's newest iPad was looking like another hot seller on Friday, with hundreds queueing at stores across Asia and Europe to get their hands on a gadget likely to dominate the tablet-computer market well into next year. The third-generation device has only a few new features, but the buzz helped propel Apple shares to a record high of $600 in New York on Thursday.
"I just got hyped into it, I guess," said David Tarasenko, a 34-year-old construction manager who was the first to pick one up from a Telstra store at midnight in Sydney. Daniel Bader, a software developer who builds iPad apps and was queuing outside the Apple store in Munich, said: "You can't explain it." Even in a tough economic climate in some parts of the world, many buyers, like 27-year-old Steve Henry in Paris, said they would scrimp elsewhere if necessary.
"I save money on my other purchases for high-tech shopping," said Henry, a systems engineer at a railway company who was hoping to buy his first iPad mainly to watch films and read during his more than two hours of travel per day. The new iPad - Apple has refrained from calling it iPad 3 - has faster chips, fourth-generation wireless, a crisper display and a better camera, making it harder for competitors like Samsung's Galaxy, which also lack Apple's range of apps and content, to catch up.
On price, too, Apple's rivals will struggle to beat it. The new iPad starts at $499 in the United States, 479 euros ($630) in Germany and 42,800 yen ($510) in Japan. Only Amazon's far more basic Kindle Fire is significantly cheaper. Analysts expect a strong start for the latest iPad and some even expect sales of the current model to overtake the iPad 2. So far, the company has sold 55 million iPads since it was launched, kicking off the tablet market, in 2010.
Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2 but has dropped its price by $100 to start at $399. Tablet sales are expected to increase to 326 million by 2015 with Apple largely dominating the market, according to research firm Gartner, rivalling sales of desktop computers, which Gartner expects to total 368 million units this year.
The enduring popularity of Apple products, and stock, have provided Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over after the death of Steve Jobs last year, with a good start in the job. The share price peaked at just over $600 half an hour after the first iPad went on sale, extending the market worth of the world's most valuable company to almost $560 billion.
Only a month earlier, the stock price had crossed $500 for the first time. It has jumped 45 percent this year. Canaccord Genuity analysts raised their target price on Apple stock to $710 from $665. Dickie Chang, an analyst with technology research firm IDC, said Cook will need to do more in future to keep up the firm's astonishing momentum.