SAN FRANCISCO: Supply issues have snarled the U.S. rollout of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s latest flagship smartphone, which will go on sale at carriers Sprint and T-Mobile later than expected, the wireless service providers said on Wednesday.

Samsung attributed the disruption to unexpectedly strong demand for the Galaxy S4, the South Korean company’s direct challenge to Apple Inc’s iPhone.

“Due to overwhelming global demand of Galaxy S4, the initial supply may be limited. We expect to fulfill inventory to meet demands in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement.

At T-Mobile, online orders will now begin April 29 instead of Wednesday as initially planned because of “an unexpected delay with inventory deliveries.” Sprint will take online orders starting Saturday as planned, but the phone will be sold at retail outlets only as it becomes available.

“We had planned to launch this next generation of the award-winning Samsung Galaxy line-up on Saturday,” Sprint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, due to unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung, we will be slightly delayed with our full product launch.”

AT&T, on the other hand, said everything was on track and the S4 would go on sale this Saturday as planned.

“Demand is far stronger than we had expected and as a result we are having difficulties in fully meeting initial supply requests,” Lee Don-joo, head of sales and marketing at Samsung’s mobile business, told reporters in Seoul.

He said the global launch would go ahead as planned on Saturday with carriers which had agreed to receive the initial supply. The phones would be shipped to other operators once network tests had been completed.

News of the patchy rollout came a day after Samsung, in one of its signature marketing strategies, took out an eight-page, full-color insert in the Wall Street Journal heralding the arrival of the device.

And by early summer, it will have set up Samsung “Experience” stores in about 1,400 Best Buy locations, designed to showcase its line-up of mobile and other electronics devices.

It was unclear what specific issues Samsung had encountered with the Galaxy S4 debut.

Supply shortages often plague the global launches of popular smartphones. iPhone buyers once routinely waited weeks or even months to receive their purchases.

Samsung’s “S” line of smartphones spearheaded its assault against Apple in past years and was instrumental in helping the company claim top-spot in the global smartphone market.

The new S4, which sports a host of software-enabled features, is seen as stealing a headstart on what’s widely expected to be an upgraded iPhone later this year. But the phone, which Samsung has said will be available in over 150 countries by the end of April, has drawn mixed reviews so far.

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, a widely followed gadget impresario, said the S4 was a good phone, just not a great one.

Industry watchers have said the success of the S4 could hinge on a supply back-up plan aimed at preventing a repeat of costly problems encountered in the launch of its premium smartphone last year.

Some analysts predict the new Galaxy could top 10 million unit sales in the first month after its launch, so any hiccups in the smooth delivery of core components could be disastrous.

The risks are high. A simple manufacturing error involving unsatisfactory design of handset cases cost Samsung 2 million units of lost sales in just a month after it launched the S III in May last year.

Shares in Samsung fell 0.5 percent in early Asian trade, lagging a 0.4 percent gain in the wider market.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – U.S. shoppers woke up with mild Surface fever on Friday, lining up in moderate numbers to buy Microsoft’s groundbreaking tablet computer designed to challenge Apple’s iPad.

The global debut of the Windows 8 operating system was greeted with pockets of enthusiasm, but not the mania reserved for some previous Apple Inc launches.

Microsoft is positioning the slick new computing device, which runs a limited version of Windows and Office with a thin, click-on keyboard cover, as a perfect combination of PC and tablet that is good for work as well as entertainment.

“I like the flexibility of having the keyboard and the touch capability,” said Mike Gipe, 50, who works in sales for bank Barclays, and was planning to buy a Surface tablet at Microsoft’s pop-up store in Times Square in New York.

“It’s the combination of having the consumer stuff and the work stuff,” he said, looking forward to using Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on the new device.

The Times Square store was the first to sell the Surface — Microsoft’s first ever own-brand computer — and other Windows 8 devices late on Thursday and will be open through the holiday shopping season. On Friday morning it was crowded with a mix of tourists and local office workers, but the cash tills were not jammed.

“With the other tablets you’re a consumer. With this you can have input,” said Peter Townsend, on vacation in New York from Australia with his wife, who bought a Surface tablet because he liked the keyboard.

Mark Pauluch, 28, who works for a New York private equity firm, said he would like a Surface because he does not want to take a laptop on a plane, but was disappointed when the sales representative told him the wifi-only Surface would not work with Cisco VPN networking.

“I can’t use this to replace my work laptop unless it supports VPN,” he said.

MIDWEST, WEST COAST

Elsewhere in the United States, there was solid but not overwhelming interest for the Surface.

“It’s a good tablet. I am not a huge i-anything fan, I like Windows,” said Matt Shanahan, a software developer who drove four hours to the tiny Michigan Avenue pop-up store in Chicago from Grand Rapids, Michigan to buy a Surface. “My friend and I are software developers and this gives us an opportunity to develop new apps,” he said.

In a pop-up store at the San Francisco Centre mall about 50 people lined up to buy the new Surface.

“On an iPad you have to use half the screen for a keyboard, or buy an accessory. I love that the Surface is so integrated, that you can type and use Word and all my other programs,” said Malte von Sehested, a textbook creator who bought a Surface.

“With the Surface you get a steeper learning curve — I had to get someone to show me how to side-swipe, swipe out to get the menus for instance,” he said. “It may take a week, before it all becomes natural. That could be a problem for Microsoft. My old dad, he would get hit by that steeper learning curve.”

ANALYSTS PATIENT

Wall Street and tech industry experts failed to show great enthusiasm for Windows 8, but were prepared to give Microsoft time to succeed.

“Microsoft did not come out with Windows 8 thinking it will be an overnight success,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. “But there’s hope that this could be the silver bullet of growth (for Microsoft) as well as giving the PC industry some optimism that there’s better days ahead.”

The next six to 12 months is a “crucial period” for Microsoft to get traction with consumers, added Ives.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester, said consumers may be best served waiting for tablets running the full Windows 8 Pro and Intel Corp chips, which are due out early next year.

“Windows 8 has a lot of great features, but RT has a long way to go,” she said, citing a lack of apps and poor video performance on the Surface.

“It’s not really a PC. RT is too restricted. Some people will be happier with the full Windows 8,” she said.

Microsoft shares were up 33 cents at $28.21 on Nasdaq on Friday. Apple shares were down slightly after disappointing earnings on Thursday.

(Reporting By Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago, Sinead Carew and Nicola Leske in New York, Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Alden Bentley)

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Apple Inc.’s pencil-thin, smaller iPad will cost much more than its competitors, signaling that the company isn’t going to get into a mini-tablet price war.

The company unveiled the iPad Mini on Tuesday, with a screen about two-thirds the size of the full model, and half the weight. Customers can begin ordering the new model on Friday. In a surprise, Apple also revamped its flagship, full-sized iPad just six months after the launch of the latest model.

Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs once ridiculed a small tablet from a competitor as a “tweener” that was too big and too small to compete with either smartphones or tablets. Now Apple’s own Mini enters a growing small-tablet market dominated by Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire.

Apple is charging $329 and up for the Mini — a price that fits into the Apple product lineup between the latest iPod Touch ($299) and the iPad 2 ($399). Company watchers had been expecting Apple to price the iPad Mini at $250 to $300 to compete with the Kindle Fire, which starts at $159. Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD and Google Inc.’s Nexus 7 both start at $199.

“Apple had an opportunity to step on the throat of Amazon and Google, yet decided to rely on its brand and focus on (profit) margin,” said Bill Kreher, an analyst with brokerage Edward Jones.

Apple shares fell $20.67, or 3.3 percent, to close at $613.36 after the price was announced. Shares of Barnes & Noble jumped 88 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $15.32. Shares of Amazon rose 53 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $234.31.

Apple has sold more than 100 million iPads since their debut in April 2010. Analysts expect Apple to sell 5 million to 10 million iPad Minis before the year is out.

Apple starts taking orders for the new model on Friday. The iPad Mini will be competing for the attention of gadget shoppers with the release that same day of computers and tablets running Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system.

Wi-Fi-only models will ship on Nov. 2. Later, the company will add models capable of accessing cellular, LTE data networks.

The screen of the iPad Mini is 7.9 inches on the diagonal, making it larger than the 7-inch screens of the competitors. It also sports two cameras, on the front and on the back, which the competitors don’t.

The iPad Mini is as thin as a pencil and weighs 0.68 pounds, half as much as the full-size iPad with its 9.7-inch screen.

The screen resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels, the same as the iPad 2 and a quarter of the resolution of the flagship iPad, which starts at $499.

The new model has better apps and is easier to use than competitors such as Google’s Nexus, said Avi Greengart, a consumer electronics analyst with Current Analysis.

“This really is not in the same category as some of the other 7-inch tablets,” he said. “And that’s before you consider that it has a premium design — it’s made of metal that’s extremely lightweight.”

Jobs attacked the whole idea of smaller tablets in his last appearance on a conference call with analysts in October 2010.

“The reason we wouldn’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a price point. It’s because we don’t think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen,” Jobs said. “The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.”

Job’s chief objection was that a smaller screen would make it hard to hit buttons on the screen with the fingers — never mind that Apple’s iPhone, with an even smaller screen, was already a hit at the time.

Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue started working on changing Jobs’ mind. In an email sent to other Apple managers in January 2011, Cue said the CEO had started warming to the idea of a smaller tablet. The email surfaced as part of Apple’s patent trial against Samsung Electronics Co. this year. Jobs died last October.

Company watchers have been expecting the iPad Mini for a year and most of the details, except the price, had leaked out.

Apple also said it’s upgrading its full-size iPad, doubling the speed of the processor. Previously, the company has updated the iPad once a year.

The fourth-generation iPad will have a better camera and work on more LTE wireless data networks around the world. Apple is also replacing the 30-pin dock connector with the new, smaller Lightning connector introduced with the iPhone 5 a month ago.

The price of the new full-size model stays the same as the previous version, starting at $499 for a Wi-Fi-only version with 16 gigabytes of memory.

Apple also introduced a 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop with a Retina display sporting four times the resolution of the older model.

The new model, which follows a 15-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display introduced in June, goes on sale Tuesday for $1,699.

The old MacBook Pro will still be sold, starting at $1,199.

The new model dispenses with an optical disc drive and a traditional hard drive. Instead, it uses solid-state flash memory. This makes it 20 percent thinner and at 3.75 pounds, nearly a pound lighter than the previous model.

Apple also eliminated the optical drive from its new iMac desktop computer, helping slim the edges down to 5 millimeters, one-fifth the thickness of the old model. That makes the edges thinner than most stand-alone computer monitors. It bulges in middle of the back, however.

An iMac model with a 21.5-inch screen will start shipping in November for $1,299 and up. A 27-inch version will start at $1,799.

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Svensson contributed from New York.