One of the big questions about Wednesday’s iPad 3 announcement isn’t really the Retina display, which now is almost a given, but rather if it will support LTE or not.
While we’ve heard conflicting rumors about this within the last few weeks, iMore now claims that one of their sources confirmed the iPad 3 will indeed be LTE capable…
The same source that originally told iMore Apple would be holding their iPad 3 event on March 7 has now let us know that the announcement will in fact include 4G LTE networking.
Right now, AT&T’s LTE network is quasi nonexistent, while Verizon’s is comforting its lead.
It’s also interesting to note that LTE is a fairly new technology which has yet to be deployed in many other countries around the world. And we’re not even talking about the poor battery life that LTE-capable devices endure.
While the benefits of an iPad LTE are still limited, it would seem that Apple is betting on the future by adding LTE support to the iPad, and most likely the iPhone 5 later this year. That strategy would be in direct contradiction with the fact that the original iPhone was not 3G capable because Apple deemed the technology not widespread enough at the time, when it was actually much more available than LTE is today.
Two more days, and we’ll know for sure.
What do you think?
[iMore]