Apple iPad 3 May be Launched by March: Roundup of Rumored Specs

Substantiating to the DigiTimes report, Barclays Capital has said the Cupertino, California-based tech giant may unveil two iPads in 2012. According to analyst Ben Reitzes of Barclays, while one model of the iPad 3 will come with better cameras, higher resolution display, A5 processor and Siri in March, another one will hit the market later this year, featuring a faster processor and 4G LTE.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek also expects an iPad 3 launch in calendar first quarter while Wedbush Securities analyst Scott Sutherland also anticipates iPad 3 will arrive in the same time this year.

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Take a look at the rumored features of iPad 3:

Design: Apple, which is best known for its beautiful design, is anticipated to adopt a teardrop design for iPad 3 that is supposed to be thinner than previous models with an aluminum plate casing.

It is expected that Apple is adopting a more uniform design across all of its devices than ever before. For this, aluminum would be a consistent material that will also be used in the upcoming iPad 3, iPhone 5 and iPod lineups as well.

Display: According to Misek, Apple has shifted display production and that Sharp has now become a large panel supplier. He believes that the Gen 6 Kameyama facility has been exclusively taken over for Apple purposes with Apple purchasing $500 million to $1 billion of equipment for the manufacturing of iPad 3 and iPhone 5 LTE displays.

Misek believes production of iPad 3 displays began two weeks ago and is the cause of much of the noise in the supply chain. Also, he believes that Apple and Sharp together have a modified IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) technology to achieve 330 dpi, which is sufficient for an HD display while not using IPS nor having to include dual-bar LED backlighting.

Going forward, Misek believes that Apple and Sharp will jointly develop OLED panels for use in the iPhone and iPad within the next one to two years. This contrasts with conventional wisdom that states Samsung will have a lock on OLED for that period. The equalizer is a new printing technology based on a combination of daisy wheel and inkjet technology that "prints" the OLED onto a film that is then deposited onto glass.

In a recent report, MacRumors claimed to have acquired a leaked photo of the iPad 3 suggesting that the device will come with the same 9.7-inch size display but will sport a high resolution screen of 2048x1536 which is four times the number of pixels of the current iPad 2.

The talks about a retina display first reared its head with the previous iPad 2, but Apple had other plans. Now, iPad 3 is being massively speculated to arrive in the retina display with an improvised resolution of 2058x1536 pixels.

Operating System: Apple's iPad 2 has iOS 4 that could be upgradable to iOS 5, which was announced at the WWDC 2011 keynote address on June 6, 2011. The iOS 5 comes with 200 new features that will include Improved Notifications System, Newsstand and iMessage. It will also feature new applications, such as the Reminders app and Newsstand, an application resembling Folders and iBooks.