Is the iPad 3 already going into production for a late 2011 or very early 2012 launch?

According to industry analysts (people who have nothing better to do than to constantly monitor mobile phone raw material supply lines all day) are predicting that Apple could be dropping a slightly larger, HD iPad 3 as early as Christmas of this year or very early Q1 2012, months before anyone had previously expected it.

An analyst is claiming that his supply chain sources are telling him that the iPad 3 is already moving into production. The analyst in question is from Susquehanna Financial and is named Jeff Fidacaro. According to Fidacaro’s checks, Apple has ramped up Q4 iPad orders to between 12 and 14 million up from a planned 11 to 13 million.

The sources tip that the increase is in part due to early production runs of the iPad 3. The iPad 2 landed in March of this year, and Apple will undoubtedly sell hoards of the next iPad so getting it into production early makes sense. The analyst figures that anywhere from 600,000 to a million of those extra iPad orders are the iPad 3. There’s no possibility the iPad 3 production is for release this year, but they could be getting an early jump on components to be released in Q1 2012.

Again, there are people that sit around all day and do nothing but make speculations like this, and there seemed to be incredibly solid evidence that the iPhone 5 was going to come out this month, but that didn’t happen, but we’ll see. Likely features on an iPad 3 might be a slightly larger screen, a much faster processor and a Retina Display HD screen.

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