It’s being claimed that Apple has placed an order for the production of a 12.9-inch iPad in the second half of 2014.
Numerous reports over the past six months have claimed that Apple is planning a so-called iPad Maxi, and now it's being claimed that we'll see the fruition of these plans in around a year's time.
That’s the assertion being make by Taiwanese supply chain watcher and arch rumour monger DigiTimes, anyway.
Apparently, Taiwan parts manufacturer Quanta has been given the responsibility of mass producing the required amount of super-sized tablets. This, it’s claimed, will pose a number of challenges for the world’s largest producer of netbooks (that’s Quanta, not Apple).
Not only will Quanta have Apple’s typically constrained dimensions and top both industrial design to deal with, but the uncommon form factor means that order volumes are likely to be limited.
Still, this super-sized tablet format is likely to become a lot more mainstream over the coming year or so. It’s been widely rumoured that Samsung is deep into production of a 12.2-inch Galaxy Note tablet.
Back at the end of October, this new Samsung device was even benchmarked. It’s going to sport a 12.2-inch 2560 x 1600 display, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU clocked at 2.3GHz, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and an 8-megapixel rear camera.
Given the apparently advanced stage of development for the Galaxy Note 12.2 (as it might be called), it’s quite possible that Samsung will beat Apple to market by a good few markets. We’ll be looking out for it at next yea’s CES and Mobile World Congress events in January and February respectively.
Further Reading: iPad mini vs Nexus 7
