Apple said Wednesday it was delaying the worldwide release of the iPad for a month because of heavy U.S. demand.

“Faced with this surprisingly strong U.S. demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May,” Apple said in a statement.

“Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks.

“We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10,” the California-based company said.

“We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason — the iPad is a runaway success in the U.S. thus far.”

The new tablet computer from Apple went on sale in the U.S. on April 3.