Not content to just let the iPad 3 rumors ride off in to the sundown, Digitimes is moving out the primary iPad 4 rumors of the season. And it is a doozy: In accordance with confidential sources, Apple is presumably planning to kick off the iPad 4 in October of 2012, fresh on the heels of an alleged (and even more likely) March launch of the company’s iPad 3.
Wait, what?
Why don’t we backtrack for a minute and have a look at Apple’s product timeframes. When’s the very last time the organization launched two full device iterations from the same product family, around the very same year?
The iPhone released at the end of June of 2007, accompanied by its 3G-sporting successor in July of 2008. The 3GS – even now a brand-new telephone, despite Apple’s refusal to drop the “3″ branding – hit shops one year later in July of 2009, with Apple eventually jumping up to the magical iPhone 4 in June of 2010.
Yes, the CDMA-supporting model of the iPhone 4 arrived to Verizon in February of 2011 – exactly the same year as Apple’s release of the iPhone 4S (at the end of October) – but that does not count to be a substantial item iteration per se. The CDMA iPhone 4 remains the same ol’ iPhone 4 generally, just one that’s setup to operate with a diverse cellular network technological innovation.
In short, one new iPhone each year.

Following up: The iPad. Apple released its very first iPad in April of 2010; Apple launched its second iPad in March of 2011. That was easy. So here’s the iPod touch, too: The product came out on store cabinets in September of 2007, with new decades of the non-phone media player punching the market in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Of course, the once-per-year schedule will get just a little grayer within Apple’s iPod lines – Classic, Shuffle, and Nano – however these devices don’t run iOS, so there is no need to include them in the discussion at this time. Through the iPhone, to the iPad, to the iPhone Touch, Apple’s lines of iOS devices have obtained one main iteration each year ever since the birth of each.
In short, why would Apple all of a sudden feel the requirement to change the game — and cannibalize the item it would have just launched some seven months prior – by delivering an iPad 4 soon after an iPad 3? Apple’s almost certainly going to drop the price of the iPad 2 to create appeal for a more inexpensive ‘Pad while simultaneously floating the iPad 3 as the flashier choice.
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