Hot on the heels of the emergence of a leaked photo that purportedly showed the rear housing of the iPad 3, a new report has claimed that Apple's new tablet will be making its debut early next month. Sources speaking to All Things D have said that Apple is planning to hold an event to introduce the new iPad during the first week of March. The gathering will reportedly be taking place in San Francisco, but there's no word yet on exactly when the new slate will actually be going on sale. As far as the iPad 3 itself goes, All Things D's sources believe that its feature set will basically line up with the rumors that we've been hearing as of late, which includes an iPad 2-like form factor, better GPU, speedier processor and a 2048x1536 display "or something close to it."

As I mentioned yesterday, Apple chose to debut the iPad 2 on March 2nd last year and then put it up for sale on March 11th. The Cupertino firm is known for sticking with a fairly regular release cycle for its iOS devices, so an iPad 3 debut early next month would make sense, and like All Things D mentions, an actual launch of the new iPad around a week after the unveiling could be in the cards. And now we wait for Apple to start hitting inboxes with invites for this upcoming event.

Via All Things D