The tight supplies and resulting delays were not surprising.

Last year, the Apple iPad 2 in the U.S., where shipping delays changed several times on opening day, first from two to three business days, then five to seven days, and finally settled on two to three weeks.

Four days later those delays had grown to , a timespan that one analyst called "intense."

Apple acknowledged it could not keep up with demand for the iPad 2.

In an April 2011 conference call with Wall Street analysts, Tim Cook, at the time its chief operations officer, called demand "staggering" and admitted orders were bogged down in the