East coast Mac mavens, rejoice. You can get your hands on an iPad 2 a full three hours before people out west. Life is good. Even better, Apple has decided to release the iPad 2 at 5PM your-local-time today. You can wake up early (east coast) or stay up late (west coast) and order it online at 1:00 AM PST/4:00 AM EST, but you won't have the device in your hot little hands right away. The more excitable instant gratification addicts among us will be starting their weekends off by lining up outside the nearest Apple store or one of the many fine retail establishments -- AT&T, Best Buy, Target, Verizon Wireless, Wal-mart and "select Apple Authorized Resellers" -- offering the iPad 2. What strikes us as peculiar, though, is today's 5 PM retail launch hour. Why did the marketing whiz kids and sales strategists choose 5 PM as optimum time for the iPad 2's retail debut?
Suspicion on online message boards points to media appeal; get everyone lining up in the late afternoon and you have a perfect news clip, just in time for the 6 o'clock news. Starting sales at dawn wouldn't glean as much coverage, and noon is obviously unsuitable for people who have only an hour's lunch. First thing Saturday morning is also somehow less intriguing than 5PM Friday, and many people might want to sleep in on that day.
"Opening up regular retail sales at a time that's convenient for walk-in traffic -- at the end of the work day -- rather than at a time that forces people to undergo ridiculous suffering and discomfort to get their prized iGadget is smart," says Jeff Yang, trend expert for Iconoculture a consumer research and advisory company.
"The whole line-camping thing may be sexy PR if you're unveiling the first iteration of a new product, but at this point, the iPhone and iPad are known quantities, and it makes more sense for Apple to focus on maximizing efficiency rather than juicing publicity -- especially since, as some people suggest, this is an interim release before the big bang of iPad 3, projected to land later this year," says Yang.
Yang believes that despite costing hundreds of dollars, the iPad 2 is almost going to be an impulse buy for consumers (his sister and parents are "poised to strike" as soon as it goes on sale online). He thinks that consumers may casually make the decision to swing by a store on the way home and pick up an iPad 2 for their weekend entertainment, but expects most people will purchase online.
If you purchase your new tablet from the Apple Store, you can opt for free standard shipping for delivery within six business days after shipping (no official word yet on how quickly the iPad 2 will ship), two business days ($12 fee), orone business day after shipping (for a yet-unpublished fee, expect around $20). You can also order online from Verizon and AT&T's Wireless stores online (AT&T online was already pre-selling iPad 2s last night at 8PM ET, Verizon was not). Wal-mart's online store was already sold out of iPad 2s at 8 PM EST on Thursday night due to active pre-ordering, but is expecting to restock.
Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, did some complicated crunching of numbers and predicted in a research note that Apple will sell 5.5 million iPad 2s by the end of March (the first-generation iPad sold roughly 3.27 million units in the same time frame). While he cites time of day as a critical factor in a consumer's willingness to stand in a line, he notes that weather can kill the most perfect sales timing. He expects shorter lines at Apple and other retail stores today, simply because there are more stores selling iPad 2 than there were for the first-gen iPads.
Speaking of which, while the on sale time choice is sparking some idle curiosity, it's certainly not without precedent. After all, weren't you waiting in line last year for the first generation iPad?
Sent from my iPad
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