South African Apple fans who are eagerly awaiting a local release of the company’s iPad tablet PC will be disappointed to hear it may still be some way off.

It was generally expected that South Africa would be among the nine countries in which Apple would choose to release the iPad in July. Reuters however has reported that the new markets are Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

This brings the total number of countries in which Apple has made the iPad available to nineteen.

Although Apple confirmed that it plans to release the device in "many more countries" before the end of the year it did not provide any further details regarding South Africa.

Local Apple distributor Core Group has yet to confirm when it will be releasing the iPad in South Africa.

Despite this, local mobile operators MTN and Vodacom have each ordered thousands of micro SIMs which are compatible with the iPad and the company’s new iPhone 4. No word on when the operators expect the iPad to be released locally has yet been given.