Mark your calendars: Apple may announce iPad 3 in early March

One year after Apple unveiled the iPad 2, the company is set to announce the iPad 3 in the first week of March, sources have told AllThingsD.

The event will likely be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which traditionally houses Apple’s largest announcements. The timing makes sense for Apple since it launched the iPad 2 in early March last year.

There’s no word yet on when the iPad 3 will actually be available (or if it will even be called that), but we can expect it within a week or two after the announcement.

At this point, we expect the iPad 3 to offer a faster processor, faster graphics, and a higher resolution retina display. Apple will likely include its new A6 chip in the iPad 3, which was initially expected to be a quad-core chip, though recent rumors now allege it to be a faster dual-core processor.