According to reports from Business Insider Apple will release its third generation iPad tablet in February next year. Richard Gardner, an analyst from Citi, believes that the Cupertino tech company will release the iPad 3 with a Retina display and twice the processing power earlier that expected to head off the competition.
Gardner said: “There do not appear to be any significant technical hurdles remaining that would prevent the iPad 3′s launch.” He also predicted that the company’s final iPad sales for the current quarter would be 12 to 13 million units.
Many Macolytes were hoping that Apple would include a Retina display in the iPad 2, but it failed to materilise, leading many to postulate that the iPad 3 would be the true sequel to the iPad 1 and would include a Retina display.
The third generation iPad is expected to have a screen resolution of 2048×1546, compared to the iPad 2’s 1024×768 and to accommodate the new screen tech it’s expected to be thicker than the current ultra-thin iPad 2.
It’s thought that Apple will look to get a early march on its main rival Samsung, who are expected to follow-up to the Galaxy 10.1, with a Galazxy 11.6, which is said to have a 2560×1600 screen resolution and the new quad-core Tegra processor and would be announced in the spring at Mobile World Congress.
Apple is top-dog in the tablet market, with Asus, Motorola, Samsung amongst others all playing catchup with their Android offerings. And now that Amazon has recently enter the race the tablet market is one of the most competitive around.
Apple’s plan could be trying to head off the competition from similarly priced Android tablets, if it did release the iPad 3 sooner than expected it would have the effect of reducing prices for older versions of the iPad, which would encourage consumers attracted to the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet to instead climb aboard the iOS platform at a discount.
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