While Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed that 2011 would be the year of the iPad 2, the company may be planning to launch a revised iPad this fall with a much sharper screen. Reportedly dubbed the "iPad HD," the device would feature a 9.7" 2048x1536 pixel display geared toward "pro" users

According to sources for This is my next, the new iPad technically would be a variant of the current iPad 2, in keeping with Jobs' "year of the iPad 2" proclamation earlier this year. The higher resolution device would instead be geared towards more advanced users—"think MacBook and MacBook Pro," according to This is my next. It would also be compatible with "something like" iPad versions of Final Cut Pro or Aperture.

While early iPad 2 rumors suggested a "Retina" display would be featured, the device instead shipped the same 1024 x 768 resolution as the original iPad. We argued that something approaching the 326ppi resolution of the iPhone 4 might appear in the iPad 3, assuming sufficient tech would allow a 10" 2048x1536 display to be built for a reasonable price. The resulting pixel density—260ppi—would be much sharper than the current display, and would allow older apps to be easily scaled to the new resolution with minimal processor overhead and zero developer effort.

This same 2048x1536 resolution is cited by This is my next's sources for the iPad HD. Apple started including pixel-doubled artwork in versions of iBooks for iPad some time ago. It recently added yet more 2048x1536 pixel artwork in iOS 5 betas for newer features like Twitter and Newsstand. So it seems a pretty safe bet that a future iPad will definitely use this resolution.

LG, which manufactures the 3.5" 326ppi Retina display used in the iPhone 4, announced in May that it was building 9.7" advanced high performance in-plane switching (AH-IPS) displays with up to 2 times the resolution of standard displays. "The ultra high resolution technology employed by AH-IPS adds a greater number of pixels than can be recognized by the human eye at a typical distance," the company said—exactly the same language Steve Jobs used to describe the iPhone 4's Retina display.

LG showed off prototypes of the displays at the Society for Information Display’s Display Week 2011 conference in May, so it's possible that such a display is already being mass-produced. However, we don't believe that Apple would introduce a new iPad after finally shipping the iPad 2 in volume in the most recent quarter. Instead, we believe the new display will make its way into an iPad 3, likely to be released in March or April next year.

If the display is too costly to keep the iPad's introductory price at $499, Apple might decide to fragment the product into two distinct variations as This is my next suggested. Still, we feel that one of the biggest improvements that would come from such a high-resolution display—sharper and easier to read text on websites, eBooks, PDFs, or digital magazines—would benefit all iPad users. Even though the iPad dominates tablet market share at this early stage, it doesn't seem wise to fragment the platform into two separate display resolutions. Will Apple do it, or will it simply adopt the higher resolution display across the board?

Listing image by Images by Apple Inc.