Romanians queue up to buy iPad 2

eMag, the biggest IT&C retailer, saw its first batch of 80 iPad 2 Apple tablets imported to Romania sold out "almost straight away" with the company expecting the next batches to sell quickly as well, and amid pre-orders from a further 720 people at the end of last week.

The first version of the iPad tablet, launched by Apple in April 2010, sold around 10,000 copies in Romania, according to estimates made by the biggest local retailers.
"The second batch is scheduled for April 4th and the batches after that should follow the same pace. We are making efforts to bring large amounts to Romania. On top of the extremely high demand come Japan's manufacturing problems, so it is quite likely that very low stocks will be the rule in the next few months," Radu Apostolescu, co-founder and marketing manager of eMag told ZF, adding that the "battle over stock" with other companies is "incredible".

"This is the first product to have generated such high interest, irrespective of the price category," added Apostolescu, referring to the 800 pre-orders for the tablet which the company sells at prices starting from 2,500 lei (611 euros) for the non-3G enabled 16-GB version.