Apple Expected To Announce 4G iPad 3 On 7 March

Apple will announce the latest incarnation of the iPad on 7 March according to according to iMore, citing “sources who have been reliable in the past”.

Rumours of the tablet’s impending release have been gathering steam for some time now, and iMore’s date matches up with an AllThingsD’s prediction, and Apple’s tradition of making major announcements on a Wednesday.

LTE rumours confirmed

The early suggestion that the iPad 3 would support Long-Term Evolution (LTE) 4G connectivity has also seemingly been confirmed by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which reported that Verizon Wireless and AT&T will sell a version that runs on their fourth-generation wireless networks, adding that stateside rivals Sprint and T-Mobile USA have declined to comment.

According to “people familiar with the matter”, the two telecoms providers are pinning hopes on the LTE functionality of the iPad 3 to increase the number of US contract subscribers to the networks – in the UK spectrum allocation delays will hold back development of a 4G network for the next few years.

Though Apple has refused to comment on an event of any sort in March, sources close to the matter told The Next Web that Apple is in ‘crunch mode’ in preparing apps for demonstration on the expected 7 March launch day.

The apps, rumoured to be in production, will be expected to make the most of the 2048 x1536 retina display widely believed to be included in the iPad 3. However, confusion still persists about the new model’s processing power with rumours alternating between an A6 quad-core and an improved version of the current dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor.