New iPad rumors seem to be cropping up daily, and the latest claims Apple plans to release the iPad 3 in March and follow up with the iPad 4 in October.
Industry sources apparently shared Apple’s iPad timeline with DigiTimes, and said the iPad 3 will sport an HD display with 1536 x 2048 resolution, and longer battery life. They also claim Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2, but at a lower price to compete with other tablets and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.
The quick update cycle for the iPad 4 will allegedly bring more serious hardware improvements and revamped built-in apps, according to the DigiTimes sources.
If the short update schedule sounds a little familiar, that shouldn’t be a big surprise. Last year, rumors circulated that Apple was planning the same thing for its iPhone lineup, although those rumors never panned out.
Most likely, the fast iPhone update rumors fizzled out because they were sparked by idle speculation from Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. He posed a “what if” question speculating on why Apple could release to iPhone upgrades in a year, which quickly evolved into a rumor that Apple was planning on doing just that.
Considering how well the iPad 2 is selling, it seems more likely that Apple would wait until fall to release the next major iPad upgrade, much like it did in 2011 with the iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S transition.
Other than the obvious assumption that Apple has plans to release updated iPad models at some point, this DigiTimes rumor deserves a healthy dose of skepticism.