Warehouse jumps gun on new iPad

The Warehouse has jumped the gun on Apple, announcing it will have the latest iPad available on its website this morning - two days ahead of the official New Zealand release on Friday.

And a technology commentator says the Red Sheds' "publicity-generating exercise" will antagonise the tech giant, which likes to carefully stage-manage its product releases.

Jenni Ryan, The Warehouse's marketing general manager, said the company had just 100 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only new generation iPads in stock.

They can only be bought online at thewarehouse.co.nz - and will be available from 11am for $799.

Ms Ryan said the tablet computers had been parallel imported from a source in the United States, where the new Apple product was released on Friday.

Ms Ryan said she was unsure when The Warehouse would receive additional iPad stock.

The Warehouse has been placing increased emphasis on growing its online sales.

However, technology commentator Peter Griffin said the publicity the retailer gains from its early sales of the new iPad might come at the cost of upsetting the world's biggest technology company.

"They [Apple] like to carefully build up the hype and it works well for them so they'll be a bit miffed."

Ms Ryan said giving customers a bargain was The Warehouse's aim, not upsetting the tech company.

An Apple spokeswoman in Australia declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Apple said yesterday it had sold three million new generation iPads since its release in the US and nine other countries on Friday.