Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.

“Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”

Two million sounds a lot, but how does it compare to a rather more mature segment, lets say the Mac? In the first quarter of this year, Apple sold 3.36 million Macs. Extrapolate the iPad figures to three months (three million) and you get pretty close to that figure. And if you compare the sales of portable Macs for that same quarter (2.1 million), the iPad is already outselling the MacBook line. Sure, the entry level iPad is half the price of the cheapest MacBook, but the iPad is also a brand new category of device, not a seasoned – and known – bestseller.

The iPad, then, is a success, and the tablet mass-market is officially here. We can’t wait to see what Google and Palm have got coming.