Is Apple Ramping Up iPad 3 Production? Signs Point to Yes

Is Apple already starting production of the iPad 3? If reports from my favorite and infamous industry site Digitimes are to believed, it’s happening right now. Here’s a quick little blurb on what the iPad of 2012 may look like …

Sources close to the supply chain told Digitimes:

“Due to inventory adjustments at Apple, LG Display saw its shipments of 9.7-inch panels to Apple decline from three million units in September to 2.5 million units in October … while CMI slashed its shipments from 700,000 units to 350,000 units during the same month, said the sources … Samsung and Sharp already began shipping panels for the next-generation iPads to Apple in October … TPK Holding and Wintek will begin to ship touch panels for the new iPads to the supply chain in November-December …

If these sources are to be believed, Apple is likely going to ship the iPad 2 alongside the iPad 3, since Digitimes also reports that Samsung saw no decrease in shipments of iPad 2 screens. So what will the iPad 3 be like, and will it be a new product altogether?

Lately, the iPad rumor mill has been filled with everything from the resurrection of the 7-inch iPad to the idea that the iPad 3 may be a “professional” iPad with a heavily coveted retina display. The argument has been made that current mobile CPUs could not handle a “retina” display on a 10-inch screen, which would be 2048×1536 (if the same “retina” scaling from iPhone to iPhone 4 is to be kept). But information about a quad-core mobile CPU from Marvell has been uncovered in Xcode, and that kind of mobile CPU would be perfect for a prototype iPad driving a display of that size and resolution.

As always, we can guess, but Apple is the only one that truly knows. And even if it’s all true, Apple has been known to pull product at the last minute. But I would say a retina-display iPad is almost certain by 2013. Keep it locked here for all the Apple rumors you love to hate as 2012 rolls on.