Apple iPad 3 Announcement Officially Set for March 7

It’s official, the next-generation Apple iPad is poised for an unveiling on March 7. Apple sent out the following invite to the press for the event at 10AM local time on March 7 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

As previously rumored, the invite pictured above suggests that the new iPad (not officially dubbed the iPad 3 yet, as iPad 2S and iPad HD are still possibilities) will sport a Retina Display with a 2048 x 1536 resolution. In order to power the higher quality display, however, the unit may be slightly thicker -- some sources are saying as little as 1mm thicker -- to accommodate a larger battery. Other expected features of the next iPad include an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, as well as 4G LTE support.

It's also worth noting that the home button may be getting the axe, hence the "And touch" part of the invitation. As you can see in the picture above, there is no home button to be found on the bottom edge of the device, which is where it's located on current devices. And we know for a fact that the edge shown in the picture is the bottom edge of the iPad (where the home button is located on current devices), as the icon spacing we see only occurs when the tablet is held in portrait mode.

What is currently unknown, however, is what kind of processor will power the device. One would assume that it's going to be more powerful than the one found in the current-gen iPad 2, given that this is an upgrade and a more powerful display calls for a more powerful chipset. But precisely what kind of processor will be found in this iPad and whether it will be dual-core or quad-core remains a mystery. We'll just have to wait until March 7 to find out.