Investment research firm Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster has told his clients today that Apple is likely to host a media event by the end of April, which could see the introduction of redesigned iPads, AppleInsider is reporting. He believes that Apple’s timeline of product launch events over the past two years suggests that a Spring event will introduce a Retina iPad update.
The analyst claims that the epeculated event could produce a major design overall to the full-sized iPad with Retina display, which would resemble the iPad mini. “We believe that looking at the history of time between Apple product launch events suggests that the company will introduce something new in March or April”, he said. “We believe Apple could update the full-sized iPad to a body style similar to the iPad mini.”
Additionally, we believe that the iPad Mini could get a Retina display, although that may happen later in the year given the supply constraints Apple faced on the Mini in the December quarter.
The average time between the events has been 123 days, about 4 months. The longest amount of time between events since the 3GS launch in 2009 was 216 days (about 7 months), which was the gap between the iPad 2 launch in March 2011 and the iPhone 4S launch in October 2011.
He also said that in addition to the incremental iPad update, Apple could update the Apple TV with better software and App Store support, ahead of a formal television launch at a later date.
