Henceforth, it shall be known as "Gruber's Guess"

> Now that the iPad is out, though, I don’t expect to see new hardware revisions pre-announced — at least not by more than a handful of weeks. Overall, I think the iPad fits most naturally into the same schedule as the iPods: where new hardware is announced and ships in September. The iPad was [a massive hit](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html) during this past holiday season. > > I don’t think April is a particularly good month for an annual iPad release. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad month, either, but it doesn’t make as much sense as September. April is four months into the new year, but still feels like “early” in the year. That leads to whispers and rumors during the holiday season that people should wait. Shipping new hardware in April adds another milestone to the iOS release schedule, too. > > Thus, my gut feeling is that Apple will move the iPad to a September release schedule, alongside the iPods. But they wouldn’t want to wait over a year and a half from the announcement of the original iPad to announce the second one — not with these stakes, and not with so many serious competitors trying their best to catch up. Guber’s “guess” here makes a lot of sense. Especially when you consider that the non-touch iPods really don’t have a lot of potential to “wow” people anymore. Seems a shame to waste the big fall announcement on new nanos.

Meanwhile, the iPod Touch part of that announcement in September has become mostly about taking the latest iPhone and taking out the phone. So turning the Fall event into an iPod Touch/iPad event to prep for the holiday shopping season makes a LOT of sense to me.

Thanks to the lack of 2-year commitments on iPad ownership, it also makes sense that iPads don’t really need to strictly adhere to a “once-a-year” strategy all the time the same way iPhones do. iPads are more like Macs in this way, and many Mac products used to get updated on a 9-month cycle not so long ago. I think APPLE likes the once-a-year schedule as a rule, but breaking it once to get the iPad on a fall cycle wouldn’t be too far a stretch. Especially during a year like this one, where most people expect iPad 2 to be like the iPhone 3Gs, rather than the 4. (A specs update, rather than a complete redesign, in other words.) If they have some major new feature (hi-res display or who knows what else?) that isn’t quite ready for April but will be by September, an iPad 3 in the fall starts to look even more reasonable.

And imagine how screwed HP, RIM, and all the Android manufacturers will be if Apple has some killer feature up its sleeve for this Fall, rather than next April? Talk about staying out ahead of your competitors.

Having said all that, there’s something about iPad 2 in April and iPad 3 in September that feels a little too close for comfort. Maybe if Apple shipped iPad 2 in MARCH—early in March, even—and then iPad 2 shipped in OCTOBER, that might be a bit less likely to anger iPad 2 adopters. Edy Cue was hinting at an announcement “soon” in regards to iOS subscriptions. Maybe they’ll combine the iPad2 with an iOS5 preview and get that one done in a single event.

The press will slam Apple for sure if Gruber’s “guess” proves to be accurate. Never mind the hypocrisy, considering that no one ever slams Android devices for being released on top of one another all the time. But even if none of this happens this year, I would not be surprised to see Apple shift the iPad to the fall eventually, and sooner rather than later. It certainly makes good business sense.

Update: One thing that puts a monkey wrench into this whole thing is Apple’s big problem of keeping up with demand. If they were to release new iPads and iPod Touches at the same time every year, and both at the beginning of Holiday quarter, what would that do to Apple’s ability to make enough product to sell in time? Tim Cook always chides that it’s a “good problem” to have, but it’s still a problem. There’s only so much Flash RAM available at any given time in the year. And these devices share some other components, as well.

Releasing at least one of these major products in April does give Apple a lot more breathing room on the production side of things. But maybe this big mystery component deal will help alleviate this? I don’t know enough about building such products to know.