iPad 2: Out of stock by Saturday

A launch perfectly timed to coincide with the end of Apple’s second fiscal quarter

Shoppers queued up for the iPad 2 in London. Image: onlygeek

Reports are still drifting in, but it seems likely that most of the 25 countries where Apple (AAPL) launched the iPad 2 on Friday had run out of product by Saturday afternoon.

Pocket-lint reported Saturday that the two flagship Apple Stores in London — Regent Street and Covent Garden — were completely out of stock and wouldn’t be getting more before Monday. Checks by Electronista and The Province with several Canadian Apple Stores found the same. According to Ticonderoga’s Brian White, Germany’s Apple Stores — in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Oberhausen — sold out in a couple hours. A shopper at Apple’s Opera Store in Paris reported that the outlet sold more than 3,000 iPad 2s between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday, and although the store was still selling iPads Saturday morning, by 4 p.m. its shelves were bare.

Most third-party resellers — Carphone Warehouse, Currys, PC World, and Phones4U in London, for example, and Best Buy, Future Shop and London Drugs in Canada — had limited supplies and ran out quickly.

It look like Apple moved nearly its entire stockpile of iPad 2s by midnight Saturday, which happened to mark the last day of its second fiscal quarter.

Pretty good timing.

We’ll learn exactly how many iPads Apple sold between Dec. 26 and March 26 when the company reports its Q2 2011 earnings a few weeks from now.

Also on Fortune.com:

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]