The recent launch of the iPad had took the world by storm, selling more than 500,000 units in their first week of launch on April 3, 2010. The 3G models are expected to be out on April 30, 2010, and a lot of people, including myself, are looking forward to it to come to Malaysian shores.

Beautiful but 3G model maybe not functional in Malaysia, for now.

However, through a friend Sharifah Shahidah (Twitter ID : @imshahidah), I recently discovered that due to a “Technological Leap”, we still can’t use the iPad 3G even if it arrives at our shores.

The reason?

Because it uses a Micro SIM card.

I remembered when I had my very first handphone during high school (the Motorola 8700), the SIM card used was the size of our credit cards or ATM cards. Then later they perforated the perimeter of the chip and you could just tear that piece out and it became a standard size for the SIM card for a very long time.

So how to make an already mini SIM card even more mini-er?

Simple. Just perforate it even smaller, with the chip size still maintained. Check out the picture below the various card sizes available and their codes:

The news are saying that the upcoming iPhone 4G/HD, will also run on this Micro SIM.

So unless the Telcos locally adapt to this quick, I guess we won’t be able to use either the iPad 3G or the iPhone 4G in near future. Of course, there’s always the iPad WiFi version, which in a way is useless in my opinion due to limited WiFi hotspots. It could, however, be an advantage to P1 WiMax, if they can integrate their services into the iPad, provided they overcome all the complaints we all currently hear about the signal coverage, their customer services, etc.

So we wait, and we hope our Telcos can provide this technological leap quick enough for us to catch up! While YB Khairy Jamaluddin (Twitter ID: Khairykj) is probably the only privileged guy in this country with an iPad to use in the Hulu Selangor by-election