The new iPad begins shipping, and getting delayed overseas simultaneously

If you were smart, unlike me, and you managed to pre-order your new iPad, we’ve got some great news for you: some customers have already begun receiving shipment notices from Apple. Well, that’s if you don’t live in the UK, where Apple has decided to push back iPad shipments by several days, slipping from a March 16th delivery date to somewhere between March 16-19th.

MacRumors has posted a notice from Apple that has gone out to UK customers:

Despite our best efforts and those of our shipping partners to get your order to you on time, we want to inform you that it will not arrive on its originally scheduled delivery date. Your new delivery date is 20/03/2012. Once you receive your Shipment Notification email, you can check the delivery status of your order by clicking the Track Shipment button, or by visiting the Apple Store and clicking Account.

We’re pretty confident that the people who got their pre-orders in on time will have their devices on time, or even slightly before release day. It is a bit curious that international customers are seeing shipment delay notices pop up while all things are going full-steam ahead in the US. We’ll let you figure out what that means.

We’re also pretty confident that there is going to be a limited supply of iPads this time around as well, just like in the past. So, if you haven’t preordered yet, do it now. If you plan on waiting in line for an iPad, you better get to the Apple Store bright and early.

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.