Most people couldn't imagine the iPhone 4's retina display either, but Apple did it. I used to doubt Apple's engineering capabilities, but not anymore. I wouldn't put anything past them. The display that the iPhone 4 has didn't exist till it launched, so I figure this is no different.
It's not just their engineering, but their scale. Buying 1 or 1,000 or even 100,000 of a cutting edge component can be expensive. But when you can put in guarantees on 1M+ of an item, you can seriously drive down prices.
With the iPod thie is one reason why companies like Archos, iRiver, and even MS couldn't compete with Apple. Apple got preferred pricing based on volume that no one else could touch.
If the iPad has that resolution I guarantee 10M units shipped in 2011, and that's probably conservative. No other tablet can come out and confidentally even think they could ship half that number.
The same is true of flash memory. During the heyday of the iPod, Apple was the world's largest purchaser of flash memory, and would pre-order a year's worth of production, at significant discount.
It's the cycle that kills Apple's competitors in the consumer market: 1) Apple sells millions of a brand new device, 2) this allows Apple to order millions of components, 3) cheap components drive down Apple's costs, 4) Apple can then lower the product's price but still retain a high margin, 5) Apple sells millions more because the feature & price one-two punch is too much to overcome.
Most people didn't have enough imagination, then. The Nokia N770 had a 800x480 pixel screen in 2005. It was more surprising to me that the original iPhone launched at such a low resolution and took so long to upgrade.
Which would mean the PPI is lower than the "retina display" minimum that Steve Jobs talked about when the iPhone 4 debuted. I wonder if they'll still call it a retina display?
That retina display threshold would be dependent on how far the device is commonly held from the eyes. In my experience, iPad users tend to put them in their laps whereas iPhone users tend to hold them closer.
Of course he would! It's a killer marketing term :)
Apple's marketing copy on the term specifically says: "the Retina display’s pixel density is so high, your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels."
Probably. The resolution at which you can't distinguish individual pixels depends on your distance from the screen, so they could spin it by saying you use the iPad a bit further back from your face than a phone. (If they even bother to spin it.)
Edit: Whoa, a popular point to make -- I should reload before commenting :)
I would be concerned less with expense and more with things like how much battery life you can pull off when you have to support the monster gpu such a high res screen would require. When developing for the iPad and iPhone 4, I've noticed it is actually pretty easy to run into fillrate limitations. I would be very impressed if they could pull it off, though, but I doubt it will happen in the next model.
What about the iPhone4? The screen is incredible! The current iPad badly needs an upgrade to high resolution, since as other posters have noticed, the pixelation is often quite noticeable.
2048x1536 on a 10" display is going to be extremely expensive. Doubt it such a display exists now.