CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Apple is expected to take the wraps off its latest iPad on Wednesday, which analysts widely expect will help the company maintain its dominant position in the fast-growing tablet market.
But how the company chooses to respond to the latest competitors -- most notably the Kindle Fire from Amazon.com -- could become an indicator as to how closely it plans to hew to the vision of the late Steve Jobs, or whether the company's existing managers are willing to break off onto new paths.
Apple slated an event in San Francisco for Wednesday at 10:00am Pacific Time. As usual, the company gave no details ahead of time, though the invite sent to the media shows a picture of an iPad, and the company last updated the device at the same time last year.
This would be the third update to the tablet since its initial launch in April 2010. Since then, the iPad has become Apple's second largest business line, next to the iPhone.
The company sold about 40.5 million iPads in calendar year 2011, driving revenue of nearly $25 billion. That surpassed Apple's legacy Mac business, which sold about $23 billion in revenue for the period. IPad sales now make up nearly 20 percent of the company's overall revenue base.
The most common rumors surrounding the launch -- which line up generally with most analysts' expectations -- have the new iPad 3 featuring a faster, possibly quad-core processor and a high-resolution display similar to the "Retina display" currently used in the company's iPhone and iPod Touch products.
Another common rumor has the device able to connect to 4G LTE networks -- possibly a lead-in to the iPhone 5, which is also expected to be a LTE device when it comes out sometime later this year.
"We expect improvements to be incremental and the form factor to be largely similar to the current iPad 2," Maynard Um of UBS wrote in a note to clients.
Some believe a higher resolution display and LTE connection will require Apple to put a larger battery in the device, limiting its ability to shrink the overall size.
Another possibility -- though not one modeled by most analysts covering Apple -- is for the company to release a smaller iPad, mostly as a response to the Kindle Fire, which Amazon.com launched in mid-November.
The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch diagonal screen compared to the nearly 10-inch screen on the iPad. It also starts at $200 -- about 60 percent cheaper than the lowest-priced iPad.
Apple, iPad, company
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