One analyst for Citi has claimed that Apple is looking to have the newest member of the iPad family, the iPad 3, ready to ship sometime in February of 2012. The new iPad 3 would be similar in design as the iPad 2, but the inside would have some noticeable differences. One other noticeable difference will be the new display that is rumored for the iPad 3. The retina display, which has been seen on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, will double the resolution for the iPad 3.
The analyst, Richard Gardner, claims that “several sources” said the new Apple iPad 3 could be released as early as February of 2012, which would be earlier in the year than the previous two models of the iPad. The first iPad was released in April 2010 and the iPad 2 came around in March of 2011. One rumor about the iPad 2 actually caused a stir about the release of the iPad 3. The iPad 2 release was delayed and some thought it could have been because Apple could not get the high resolution display to fit the unit and decided to stay with the current 1024×768 resolution. According to Gardner, “there do not appear to be any significant technical hurdles remaining”, so the launch should go just fine. Some reported that the new high resolution display was too thick to fit in the thin tablet, but those reports have since been denied.
The retina display, which has been reported to have up to 326 ppi, or pixels per inch, has been seen on the new iPhone’s. The first two iPad’s had a “pixels per inch” of only 132. According to reports, any display with a resolution larger than 300 ppi, has such a dense look that one cannot distinguish one pixel from another from about one foot away. That is the reason the displays are called “retina” displays.
Tablets are on the market have higher resolutions that the Apple iPad 2, but none of them are “retina” displays. Samsung has been reportedly working on that type of display for months and it would likely appear on the next Galaxy tablet. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is likely to be a competitor to the iPad and that resolution is reported at 1280×800. Gardner estimated that 12 to 13 million iPads will be sold in the last three months of 2011.
