“It’s the most definitive assurance yet that Apple’s next iPad will include a screen with a near ‘retina display’-quality resolution: DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim has told CNET that ‘production has started’ for 2048×1536, 10-inch-class tablet screens, and three manufacturers — Samsung, Sharp and LGD — are supplying parts to Apple,” Jon Phillips reports for Wired.
“Just three weeks ago, when I directly asked DisplaySearch Senior Vice President Paul Semenza if he thought Apple would be able to deliver an iPad 3 with a 2048×1536 screen resolution by the first quarter of 2012, he told me, ‘We don’t have a forecast on it, no. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get there. They’re dealing with a lot of new technologies,'” Phillips reports. “Indeed, producing relatively small, ultra-high-resolution displays is still a significant manufacturing challenge.”
Phillips reports, “‘We know there are yield issues. This is certainly a huge step up as far as pixel format, and every time you do that, there will be yield issues. But this is going forward,’ said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and monitor research for the research firm iSuppli… Yield issues notwithstanding, industry analysts now seem confident that Apple is moving forward with a super-high-resolution iPad for sale in the new year, and if history tells us anything, the company is willing to pay high manufacturing prices up front for the promise of delivering a high-impact product that no other company is shipping. In fact, says Alexander, Apple has been down this road already with the original iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Analyst: Apple starts production of high-res iPad 3 QXGA displays; Apple eyes 7.85-inch iPad – November 22, 2011
But he was just the salesman according to all the “experts” and pundits. He must have stolen all those patents. There is no way he could have done a patent. I mean…..Steve Jobs? No way.
Ugh…can’t everyone just believe that, yes, Steve was very very intelligent and DID patent things in addition to being an awesome salesman of products and things he believes in?
You can reprint this rumor a thousand times, and it still isn’t going to be true in the spring of 2012. No one is able to defend this rumor against the most elementary questions of battery life and cost.
Just a rumor, yes, but please elaborate.
I agree. Those three LCD manufacturers may be producing such panels in relatively small numbers, in hope of a future order from Apple. They are getting the technology to produce them in place, to gear up for the yields that Apple will needs, at the cost (per part) that Apple will demand. But not for Spring 2012, or even Summer 2012. If Apple keeps iPad 2 going until Fall 2012 (which is possible), maybe…
At this point, a 2048×1536 10-inch touch panel is hard to make, and that will make it very expensive. It would have more than 85% of the pixels of a 27-inch iMac display, squeezed into a 10-inch touch-sensitive screen. An iPad cannot cost over $1000.
Why must an iPad not cost more than $1000? Mac prices range from $600 up to $5000. If Apple release some of their Pro Apps for iOS at the same they could a market. Who knows, maybe that’s the reason why Adobe has delayed the iOS versions of their creative apps to spring 2012.
Apple is very careful and logical about pricing. Look at Apple’s mobile computing devices (that are not subsidized – iPhone):
iPod touch – $199 to $399
iPad – $499 to $829
MacBook – $999 and up
(It’s no accident that the prices do not overlap.)
I’m not saying there will never be an iPad that costs over $1000. But for now, iPad is Apple’s answer to netbooks (cheap under-featured laptops), and it’s destroying the market for netbooks. That’s not going to change during 2012.
Cost doesn’t matter that much to Apple. They have more than enough money to pay for its extra costs until it gets cheaper.
As for the battery, Sharp said that their new LCD tech has OLED-like battery efficiency.
So, what’s the problem again? Or do you think Apple only uses off-the-shelf parts?
So you answer Ken1w’s very specific discussion of cost with “cost doesn’t matter that much to Apple”? Apparently you think Apple’s shareholders want it to use its billions in cash to subsidize iPad 3s for Chinese consumers? And the experience of the iPhone, in which battery capacity needed to be doubled to support the retina display, is answered by citing a claim by Sharp that their tech has “OLED-like battery efficiency” which we are supposed to interpret as “there won’t be any increase in battery demands by quadrupling the resolution of the display”? Apparently Sharp has the ability to set aside the laws of physics.
Give your audience a little bit of credit for intelligence. Asserting claims succinctly and belligerently doesn’t make them accurate.
Just like the only iPad killer turned out to be the iPad 2, this rumor remains the only possible way for the competition to throw any kind of chock under the tank treads of the Apple Retail machine for this holiday season.
yep.
they did the same as soon as the iPhone 4S came out.
“hold out, Apple is already making the 5” etc.
So Wired is now reporting the iPad 3 will sell fewer units due to screen manufacturing parameters; “Yield issues.”
What are “yield issues”, as in “yield what?” for the non-tech person?
The percentage of a manufacturing batch that work vs. those that are flawed. Also applies in chip manufacturing.
Interesting! Thanks.
It’s almost guaranteed that displays built to that outrageous resolution will have low yields. This is will cause more consternation on Wall Street about Apple. They’ll reason that Apple is over-spending on technology to get relatively small returns. One would almost have to think that way if the Kindle Fire becomes a hit despite being such a small-display, low-tech tablet. Wall Street hates companies that build unnecessarily good products for consumers and consider it a waste. Apple will be definitely be frowned upon due to improving quality when it’s felt they should be lowering the cost of tablets.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Apple should hold fast to improving products for consumers which is their trademark, but as an Apple investor, I feel it’s going to harm Apple’s share price even further. Apple is already up to the level which will leave rivals struggling to keep pace. I truly believe that. If Apple were to only use these high-def displays on some limited-run Pro tablet, I can understand it, but I don’t think it’s practical to have all iPads using such a display. It’ll slow production to a crawl, cause inventory shortages and low yields will drive up internal costs.
Apple is going to continue to take the rough path despite Wall Street looking for every reason to drain as much value out of the company as possible. Investors will be fed up if they aren’t already. According to rumors, iPad demand is already decreasing for whatever reasons. I doubt a higher quality display will change that.
Just keep dumping and pumping, Apple Turnover. How many times a month do you turnover your Apple stock?
I’m just daily using with satisfaction since it was out my iPad first gen. . I didn’t buy an iPad 2 , and I will not buy an iPad 3 or whatever if it doesn’t have an hi-res retina display. Why? When I changed my iPhone 3GS with the 4S and i looked at the display, I just falled in love with it (and my eyes too (-: ).
In such devices
…woops posted unfinished.
In such devices I think the era of pixelated displays will soon finish, now that I have constantly under my eyes one retina display, iPads look like “old” …
I’ve been working with technology for years, but not with LCDs. This story is a bit puzzling. The iPhone 4 and 4S has a higher resolution ips display than is being rumored for the next iPad yet that seems to be not a problem. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be having problems making this display for the iPad, just that the reasons provided so far are unsatisfying. Maybe it is an area effect? Panels the size of the iPhone can be manufactured with reasonable yields but yields collapse for larger displays?
It looks like roughly nine iPhone displays could cover the same area as one iPad display. So if one out of nine iPhone displays is a dud that is not a big problem. However, that would translate into nearly zero yield for iPads.
This is still odd given that they can manufacture huge displays well over 60″.
To a naive observer it seems like this is a solvable problem.
The same thing happened during the early days of LCD displays. Remember the early PowerBooks with small color displays, on a huge lid with comically large border area.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook/stats/mac_powerbook540c.html
Also, the first LCD iMac had a 15-inch LCD (on the swing-arm) with the same 1024×768 resolution as the iPad’s screen.
The pixels were larger or the screens where smaller. They could technically make larger screens with smaller pixels, but not at a commercially viable cost. Todays’ huge LCD displays (well over 60″) are meant to be viewed from across a room, so those pixels are REALLY huge.
Making pixels smaller is expensive, and making the screen larger is expensive. This rumored display has 4x smaller pixels than the current iPad display, AND it has about 8.5 times the surface area compared to the iPhone Retina Display. That’s expensive squared. And that’s why doing one or the other is reasonable, but doing both is difficult.