iPad 3 in March?

Bloomberg seem to be confident that the iPad 3 will go on sale in March this year and will boast a ‘Retina’ display alongside a quad core processor.

Bloomberg’s insider said ‘the pixels are small enough to make the images look like printed material’ and ’videos begin playing almost instantly because of the additional graphics processing.’

The iPad is also said to be able to connect to ‘LTE’ networks, a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals – also known as 4G.

Bloomberg’s source says the Chinese production line for iPad 3 is running twenty four hours a day but will halt for the Chinese New Year next week.

Source: Bloomberg

Jason O'Grady over at ZDNet, though, thinks that battery life is only part of the story. "A more plausible reason," he writes, "is that Apple is waiting for mobile network technology to reach critical mass before putting it in its devices." This is a sound argument, and one that squares with Apple's past behaviour; releasing the iPhone 4S without 4G, for instance. Though Steve Jobs famously said that "it's not the consumers' job to know what they want," it's equally true that Apple doesn't necessarily need to give its consumers what they want the instant they want it. For the iPad, though, which is more of a luxury device than an iPhone, it makes sense for it to come with this extra bell and whistle.

The iPad 3 looks to offer more than the iPad 2 than the iPad 2 did over the original, however we will have to wait until March before we know more.

MIT Technology Review