About 230 Australian iPad fans, stretching three city blocks, have been lined up outside Sydney's Apple store on Friday morning to be among the first to purchase the touchscreen tablet computer, iPad.
In Sydney city, the crowd has reached fever pitch as the first customers crossed the threshold at 8 a.m. (AEST), while dozens of employees inside erupted into spontaneous applause to welcome the Apple fanatics.
An Apple spokesman in the Sydney’s Central Business District store would not disclose how many iPads were currently available in Australia, but said numbers were limited.
The spokesman said iPads that had been ordered through the Apple website would be delivered from Friday.
Australians can buy one of two models of the iPad: the Wi-Fi or the Wi-Fi+3G, which allows for fast cellular phone network access when users were not within range of a Wi-Fi network.
Prices start at 629 Australian dollars (535.8 U.S. dollars) and go up to 1,049 dollars (893.6 U.S. dollars).
Friday was the first day the new technology was available outside the U.S., where Apple has sold one million iPads in the first 28 days.
The iPad is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple for Internet browsing, media consumption, gaming, and light content creation. Released in April 2010, it established a new class of devices between smart phones and laptops.
Sydney is the largest city in Australia and Oceania, and the state capital of New South Wales.
