iPad 3 Already in the Works?

 

Is it possible we might see the iPad 3 this fall before HP has a chance to ship its recently announced entrant into the tablet wars, the TouchPad?

It could happen.

After almost a year since acquiring Palm and its OS software, HP yesterday finally announced it would ship its “iPad killing” tablet sometime in the summer. The device looks very similar to the iPad, has the same screen size, but runs on the webOS operating system, and overall has much better specs.

However, the ambiguous release date and relative silence on pricing has prompted a wave of speculation regarding HP’s tight wire act in getting the device out in front of the iPad 2, and that in turn got everyone putting the pieces together over recent component manufacturing news.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber noted:  “Summer feels like a long time away. If my theory is right, they’re [HP] not only going to be months behind the iPad 2, but if they slip until late summer, they might bump up against the release of the iPad 3. And not only did they announce this with a distant ship date, they did it with no word on pricing.”

And then TechCrunch chimed in saying they had “heard from a very good source that Apple was assembling the pieces for a big fall surprise.” They later confirmed the “fall surprise” would, in fact, be an iPad 3 event and that we could expect the iPad 2 in a few weeks.

Well, all this got us to thinking about some recent iPadNewsDaily reports.

As Apple continued to cobble together its component manufacturers, the suppliers continued to shed light on what we might expect from the next generation iPads. The information came from several different component manufacturers: Foxconn had begun preparing shipments of the iPad 2; Apple had selected Coretronic as the backlight supplier for the device's LCD display; and Genius Electronic was also said to have started manufacturing cameras and lenses that would support the dual camera iPad 2.

iPadNewsDaily followed that up with a report that Apple is planning to offer three versions of its next-gen iPad, each with alternate ways of connecting to the Internet.

At the time our thinking was the move signaled Apple’s efforts to attract more consumers by providing diverse connection options in different versions including combinations of Wi-Fi and the 3G wireless standards of UMTS and CDMA.

Maybe it is more than that.

Is it possible that with much of its manufacturing spread across Asia in numerous factories that specialize in making varying components, that Apple has found it easy to ramp up the iPad 3 while simultaneously prepping the iPad 2?

Yes.

Remember, Apple uses a lot of the same materials, chipsets and manufacturers for several products including the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and even Apple TV.

 

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