In an interview to CNET, Raymond Soneira, CEO of DisplayMate, announced that the current New iPad, the third generation iPad, is in fact the plan B. Initially, Appel was expecting to use IZGO display from Sharp, only available in March, and not ready for Apple roadmap (time and volume wise). So the company had no other choice than taking a traditional HD Retina display.
The IZGO technology, standing for Indium gallium zinc oxide, allows Sharp to produce transistors where silicone has been replace by this alloy. As a consequence, transistors offers much higher performance levels, so one can reduce the size for the same efficiency.
If you consider a 9.7" display, in 2048x1536, there are 9.5 million transistors interfering with backlighting, and that's why Apple had to double the number of LED to compensate, impacting at the end the lifetime of the battery. With a IZGO display, with smaller transistors, Appel could have kept its original LED backlighting system, and we could have gain extra hours of use of our favorite tablets.
Most users are indeed considering that when intensively used, the battery does not last that long, and we know that it has trouble to reload while being used for games. All those points refer to power consumption, and LED backlighting is hte main reason. So we can expect the iPad 4 to have a IZGO display and a 4 core CPU (most likely also dropped because it would not allow enough battery hours with the enhanced LED backlighting).
By linathael, original by Lionel