Apple Announces March 2 iPad Event

Confirming a date first reported by BoomTown, Apple this morning distributed invitations to a special event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on March 2. Their text–”Come see what 2011 will be the year of,” a smirking riff on all those “Year of The Tablet” stories, and art–a calendar date peeling back from an iPad–leave little doubt as to the event’s topic: iPad 2.

As I’ve noted here before, the iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and FaceTime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.