ASUS had a launch event here in Taiwan announcing that the would go up for pre-order on April 4th and on sale April 20th in Taiwan, Germany, Hong Kong & Singapore. We have since receiving word from Chunghua Telecom that our Padfone would be delayed until Mid-May and the word on the street in the computer market is that we’ll be seeing it on May 11th. There was no explanation provided except that the the shipment from ASUS was delayed.
On Friday Qualcomm had an earning call last week has shed some light onto the delay. Qualcomm announced on the call that it is struggling to meet demand for its latest S4 Snapdragon chips. The company had underestimated demand for its Snapdragon chips, and is now trying to push some of its other products as an alternative. We’re sure that this will result in some partners choosing solutions from other ARM SOC manufacturers like TI or Nvidia.
Update: Looks like our hunch was right, a tweet from ASUS Malaysia roughtly translates to ”I believe [the shortage is] affecting all of Qualcomm’s customers.”