A6 power iPads are still a little ways off in the future, likely some time in 2012 if you’re looking for a specific timeline. The Taiwan Economic Times is reporting that the new processors won’t exactly be ready in time, should the rumors turn out to actually be true, and the iPad 3 ship sometime this year. The original report has indicated that the A6 processor will not become available until the first quarter of 2012.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Ltd. (TSMC) is rumoured to be the company supplying the next-generation mobile chip to Apple, but the company is apparently just getting underway with production trials of the new chipset.
According to the Taiwan Economic News, TSMC has not produced chips for Apple before because they were tied up in previous commitments to Qualcomm and Nvidia. TSMC never really negotiated, nor made the contacts necessary to move forward with a partnership with Apple.
Pretty dry news if you ask us, but there’s a reason we’re pointing it out.
What’s this all mean?
The rumor suggests that The Year Of The iPad 2 will remain just that, an entire year of just the iPad 2 — no iPad 3, no iPad HD, just the iPad 2. While rumors have suggested otherwise in recent months, that TSMC has yet to begin production of the A6 chip is a pretty big indicator that the iPad 3 will probably be released some time in 2012 as opposed to 2011.
If you purchased the iPad 2 recently you can probably exhale a little. The next generation iPad could very well not be ready for another six to eight months, putting it right back on track for the yearly release cycle.
Source: Taiwan Economic News
Via: AppleBitch and GigaOm
