Users are encouraged to pre-order theirs now to avoid any disappointment

Dec 21, 2011 10:36 GMT  ·  By

Even though the 10.1-incher won’t arrive in time for Christmas in the UK, retailers across the country made available the Transformer Prime for pre-order report that demand for the Asus tablet has hugely exceeded their expectations.

In fact, Currys and PC World have said that pre-orders in the UK are already seven times greater than originally estimated, with thousands of units already being reserved.

According to their expectations, if this trend continues, the Transformer Prime may become the biggest selling tablet in the short history of Android Honeycomb.

While this is hardly surprising given the Prime’s success in other parts of the world, it does have the downside of limiting the tablet’s in-store availability once this arrives in January of next year.

As a result, Android fans who want to get their hands on a Transformer Prime are encouraged to pre-order one right now, in order to avoid any disappointments.

"We are expecting the Transformer Prime to be in high demand when it arrives in January so anyone hoping to purchase one is strongly advised to pre-order now, in order to avoid missing out," said Mark Slater, Category Director at Dixons Retail.

However, if the Prime availability in the US in anything to go by, even following Slater’s advice and pre-ordering the tablet may still not be enough.

As some of you may now, on December 19, when the Prime was said to start shipping in the US, some Best Buy customers who pre-ordered the Asus device were informed that their shipments were back-ordered.

“I reserved mine on 12/1 from BB [BestBuy] and got screwed with a backorder notice. What really upsets me is that for two weeks it showed a status of being released the 12/18/2011 and on that day did it finally change to backorder,” told Softpedia a user who pre-ordered its tablet from BestBuy.

In the UK, the Transformer Prime is expected to start shipping in January and recent reports suggest that it will arrive with Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, pre-installed.