"AppleInsider.com: Apple may surprise with near immediate availability of iPad 2 next week"
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Originally Posted by AppleInsider.com
While media reports have shed considerable doubt on Apple's capacity to facilitate a full-scale launch of its second-generation iPad in the short term, AppleInsider has reason to believe that customers could be holding the new tablet device in their hands shortly after next Wednesday's press event.
According to people familiar with the matter, Apple is preparing several of its operating segments to perform functions during the second half of next week that are representative of nothing short of a large scale, consumer-oriented product roll out (not just an announcement). And with official invitations to next Wednesday's press briefing clearly indicating a focus on iPad, these people believe at least one version of the refreshed device will be in transit to retail outlets during that briefing.
It should be noted that while nothing is definitive till Apple issues a statement, these same people have consistently provided accurate information regarding Apple's future product plans and the timing related to those plans. At the same time, their predictions arrive in stark contrast to a variety of reports over the past few weeks that have insinuated Apple would for some reason choose preview a new iPad at the top of the month but be unable to ship it till the end of the month, the following month or sometime thereafter.
In less than a year, the iPad has rapidly grown from what was once thought to be a niche product into an asset that's on the verge of generating 20% of Apple's business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Of the $26.74 billion in revenue the Cupertino-based company reported for its first fiscal quarter of 2011, $4.61 billion was attributed to the iPad, of which $4.4 billion was from the sale of the device itself. Therefore, teasing new iPads that wouldn't ship for 4 weeks or more would undoubtedly bring sales of existing models to a halt and possibly cost the company billions.
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The article also repeats the belief of others that the iPad 2
will feature an "Apple A5" SoC containing a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU plus a PowerVR SGX543 GPU. Although 512MB of RAM is a bit low compared to the 1GB found in the Xoom etc., the A5 (if true) will certainly keep the iPad 2 on a level with the CPU/GPU of the Xoom & other upcoming tablets.. As a side note, the Sony NGP will also use the Cortex-A9 and the SGX543... albeit apparently with
four cores rather than the two the iPad 2 / iPhone 5 will allegedly have.
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Hopefully the "iPad 3 in September" rumours are just rubbish. Some of the
speculation I've seen has suggested that the "big surprise" in September may be a larger version of the iPod Touch, to fill a gap between the current Touch and the iPad.