A launch in pictures: the new iPad lands in the UK
Pocket Gamer's camera comes out to play
Apple's new iPad has officially landed here in the UK.
Several outlets across England, Scotland, and Wales shrugged off their normal 9-5 operating hours and got out of bed early to flog the new tablet.
London's Tottenham Court Road branch of PC World opened its doors to eager punters at midnight, while other PC World stores around the country unlocked their entrances at 7am. Apple even opened its infamous chain of retail stores to flog the third-generation iPad a full hour early.
Naturally, we had a man on the ground.
Pocket Gamer's very own Jonathan Morris collected his danger money from PG Towers and headed straight over to Apple's flagship store on Regent Street, London.
It's how you use itThe queue outside Apple's Regent Street store "was long, but not massive", which is obviously somewhat of a surprise given the number of Cupertino fanboys that normally turn up to such events.
Of the people that had decided to show up, several were being paid by a group of Russians to hold places at the front of the queue. A Russian woman was even seen trying to buy people's positions in the queue around 30 minutes before the store opened for business. She was refused.
Many of the other queuers were planning on buying as many iPads as they could get their grubby mitts on - namely, so they could flog them and pay for their own purchase.
Throughout the wait, the queuing Apple devotees were greeted by representatives from sat nav company CoPilot. When I say 'representatives', I actually mean "a load of girls" dressed as stewardesses.
Starbucks was there dishing out free coffee, The Guardian was giving out free screen wipes, and even Red Bull made an appearance. Dynamo PR turned up to ask a few questions.
Naturally, it's safe to assume at least a few people decided to ditch the queues and head on over to PC World. In fact, we know they did. Several of the people queuing outside the Apple Store already had their hands on the new iPad.
Jonathan visited PC World on Oxford Street and the store still had plenty of stock. The Tottenham Court Road store, despite opening a full eight hours before Apple, also still had plenty of iPads to hand.
Buy first, ask later
According to an exit poll carried out by Dynamo PR, the launch of Apple's new iPad was underwhelming. Only 397 people turned up at the company's flagship store this year, which means this year's turnout was lower than the ones for both the iPad (451) and iPad 2 (632) launches.
45 per cent of the queue were buying an iPad for the very first time. The new iPad getting the most attention was the 64GB wi-fi + 4G model in black, which 57 per cent of the queue planned to buy.
Only 32 per cent of the queue owned one of Apple's Mac products, with 63 per cent owning a PC and five per cent being lucky enough to own both.
Mobile-wise, a whopping 73 per cent of everybody that turned out for the launch owned an iPhone. By contrast, a measly ten per cent of those in attendance were the proud owners of an Android, three per cent of them owned a Windows Phone device, and 14 per cent owned 'other' brands, such as BlackBerry.
