Apple's much-awaited iPad 3 to be launched on wednesday

Dubai: As with all things Apple, the anticipation is building up nicely towards the first unveiling of the iPad 3 in San Francisco on Wednesday. The invites have gone to select - and lucky - journalists to make their appearances at the event which comes with the promise: "We have something you really have to see. And touch." It's not known when such a new device would be available for sale. Last year, sales of the iPad 2 began in the US nine days after their first formal showcasing. On February 27, a report from iMore said that the iPad 3 was ready to ship from Foxconn in China and a shipment would arrive in the US on March 9. Though Apple has not confirmed what it will announce at the event, there are strong rumours that the iPad 3 will be unveiled. The upcoming event will be the first major Apple product launch since the death of Steve Jobs, the company's co-founder. According to Richard Shim, senior analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, the iPad3 will fuel further demand in the tablet space and total tablet shipments could cross 100 million from 72.7 million units in 2011. And this is where it gets interesting — it would account for 25.5 per cent of the overall mobile computer shipments. The big feature rumoured for this year's model is a display that packs four times the number of pixels as the first and second-generation models at 2048×1536. From gulfnews