This seems to be the subject of the day (although somewhat pushed to the background with Steve Jobs’ medical leave announcement).
If true, it’s clear that Apple’s approach will be a strict resolution doubling, in precisely the same manner as was done for the iPhone 4. This is an absolute requirement for ensuring app compatibility and simple evolution.
I’m desperately hoping the rumour is true because this would put yet another nail in the coffin of paper in my life.
However, there remain a whole bunch of questions around this option. At doubled resolution we’re talking 264 ppi which would be visually stunning. Think about it for a minute - that’s better than HD: 1920x1080 vs 2048x1536. But that also means 4 times as many pixels to manage, which would require an exceedingly powerful graphics card - on the order of the kind of cards that we see in full fledged portable computers. That would also mean more juice to feed the card. That means at least the same if not more battery power which would mean slimming down the iPad would be awfully difficult.
The current supplier of choice appears to be LG since they currently supply the iPhone displays and are boasting about their new Nova technology that while LCD based, apparently consumes a lot less energy than AMOLED or regular LCD. But I’m wondering why we haven’t seen any technology news from LG about this technology at anything near that PPI ratio. LG normally isn’t shy about showing off new stuff like their flexible AMOLEDs and other display technology innovations. But even the new LG Optimus Black display tops out at 232 ppi so they won’t be using the same production for the currently mythical iPad HD screen.
Then comes the inevitable question: how much? Apple has been very aggressive with the iPad pricing and we’ve seen that most competitors are going with 7” tablets, often because they simply aren’t price competitive in the 10” size. The 10” tablets in the same price range have had to make other sacrifices so in head to head comparisons, they generally come out looking pretty bad.
Given that much of the iPad’s success to date has been that it is in the affordable netbook price range, they’ve been selling a ton of them. But if the price went up significantly, the size of the potential market would shrink considerably. If the entry level price jump by $100 or more that would put a massive brake on the current adoption rate.
Or perhaps they’ll stick with the current screen on an upgraded model (camera, SD card, etc.) which will stay close to the current price points and offer a super-high-end iPad HD for those with lots of money to throw around. That approach makes more sense, especially when you consider that LG spent most of 2010 trying to get their production up to meet demand for the iPad. I imagine that getting reliable production on the kind of volume necessary with a brand new screen technology would be pretty risky.
Upshot
If the screen rumour is true I’m betting on the two model approach with probably a $100-150 premium for the HD model over the equivalent standard definition model.