Customers in Tokyo waited patiently from early morning outside Apple's main stores in downtown Ginza and the shopping district of Shibuya, many killing time by playing on or reading from their previous-generation devices.

"I was determined to get the new model as it is thinner and lighter" than the original model, Masahiko Asakura, 40, said as he came out of the Ginza store, adding that he would now give his old iPad to his parents.

"The launch was a long time coming for me," said a 22-year-old physics student who only gave her surname as Kobayashi. "I thought the first model was a bit heavy, but the new one seems the right size for me."

As the spring sun heated the pavement, Apple distributed bottled water and black parasols with the Apple logo to many of those queueing up to spend 44,800-60,800 yen ($548-$743) on the latest gadget.

The iPad 2, which hit stores in the United States on March 11, had been scheduled to go on sale in Japan on March 25.

But the launch was pushed back as the country dealt with its worst disaster since World War II, which has left more than 26,000 people dead or missing and sparked a nuclear crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima atomic plant.

With many consumers in a jittery or glum mood since the calamity, data released Thursday showed household spending plunged by 8.5 percent in March from a year earlier, the biggest drop since records began in 1964.

Asakura said the disaster was no reason to stop spending, adding that "feelings will become bottled up in society unless we have fun like this."

Apple sold more than 15 million iPads last year worldwide and 4.69 million during the last quarter.

The success of the iPad has forced rival electronics makers to begin rolling out their own touchscreen tablet computers, and Japan's Sony this week unveiled its first tablet models, codenamed S1 and S2.

The larger S1 has a single screen while the pocketable S2 has twin screens, company officials told a news conference. Both devices use Google's Android operating system and are equipped with Wi-Fi for Internet access.

Competitors have rushed to cash in on soaring demand for tablets since the iPad was released in April last year, but Sony's devices are not due to go on sale globally until the northern hemisphere autumn, well behind its rivals.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab is the best-selling rival to the Apple gadget, and Research in Motion became the latest to join the fray, with the release last week of its Blackberry PlayBook.

The iPad 2 will be launched as planned on Friday in Hong Kong, India, Israel, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

earlier related report
Viewdle lets Android smartphones recognize friends
San Francisco (AFP) April 27, 2011 - Northern California startup Viewdle on Wednesday released software that lets Android-powered smartphones recognize people's faces.

The free SocialCamera application available at the Android Market or online at viewdle.com/products/mobile was billed as the first of its kind for US smartphone users.

"Viewdle SocialCamera is the first mobile camera app to encourage socializing and communication," said Viewdle co-founder and chief executive Laurent Gil.

"Consumers can now instantly share their photos based on who appears in them," he continued.

SocialCamera uses computer algorithms to create "faceprints" that people can tag with names and store in smartphones. The software then matches faceprints to subjects in subsequent photos.

Android smartphones can instantly connect names to those in photos and share the images with those involved using social networking service Facebook; photo-sharing website Flickr, or by email or instant messages.

SocialCamera was billed as the first in a line of facial-recognition software applications aimed at the consumer market.

High-powered players in September pumped $10 million into the Palo Alto, California startup devoted to crafting ways to let smartphones "see" things the same way people do and identify faces.

The influx of cash came from Qualcomm, BlackBerry Partners Fund, US electronics retail chain Best Buy, and Anthem Venture Partners, an investment firm that has backed Viewdle from the outset.

"We are giving smartphones human eyes," Gil told AFP in an interview when the funding was announced.

"Letting them see the world the way people do... it is artificial intelligence," he said. "It is happening."

Viewdle bills itself as the leading independent facial recognition company for consumer gadgets. Its technology is developed by the company's research team in the Ukraine.

Viewdle is the result of 15 years of research, rooted in work done at The Cybernetics Institute in Kiev, and got its first infusion of investor money -- 2.5 million dollars -- in June 2008.

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