“Apple has invited the press to an event on Wednesday that will include the introduction of the iPad 2,” Anton Wahlman writes for TheStreet.
“Most of the hardware specifications of the iPad 2 are known, more or less, thanks to endless blogger speculation: one or two cameras, a faster processor, twice the RAM, some tinkering with battery, screen, thickness and bezel. In other words, in the big scheme of things, nothing too exciting,” Wahlman writes. “Do you know many people who have held off buying the iPad because it lacks a camera, dual-core CPU or 512 megs of RAM? No, me neither.”
Wahlman writes, “When you go from planning under 10 million units to 60 million, you can negotiate much better manufacturing prices. Components can also be optimized for cost, to a different degree. Apple is pre-paying for critical parts, such as memory and displays, taking risk out of the contract manufacturers, which pressures the price down. This probably means that despite some minor hardware bumps (camera, RAM), Apple could remove close to $100 in cost from each iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.