iPad 3 to be announced in early February?

Apple fans all the world over are each setting aside $500 or so for the iPad 3. As is always the case with Apple, everything is based on speculation; but we’d be shocked if the company’s latest tablet didn’t show its Retina display come March. Up to this point, speculation has pointed at an early-March announcement, with the launch a week or so later.

According to a new report, however, we may see that iPad 3 earlier than expected. According to alleged Asian supply chain sources and another alleged source in the US, Apple will be announcing the tablet in early February, and launching it about a month later. The story says that Apple’s “Special Event” is already being planned.

Would Apple spring the iPad 3 on us that soon? If it did, it would be swimming against the current of recent history. The company has established a pattern of announcing a product, then launching it about a week and a half later. We see no reason why Apple would suddenly let that gap grow to a full month. It could be that both the announcement and release would happen in February, but we wouldn’t bet the house on that either.

The most likely killer feature in the next iPad is a 2048×1536 Retina display. Those who watched Apple in the summer of 2010 will point out that the 264 pixels per inch of the iPad 3 would fall short of the 300ppi that Steve Jobs used to define a Retina display (when he was pitching the iPhone 4). Apple, however, could easily get around this by saying that a tablet is typically held farther away from the eyes than a smartphone. It’s all marketing semantics, but customers like some consistency on that front.

Other rumored features of the iPad 3 include a quad-core A6 SoC, LTE, upgraded cameras, and a physical design that is either slightly thicker or slightly thinner (depending on what source you trust).

via Macotakara