iPad 2 may start shipping by end of February 2011

Warm up your credit cards: Digitimes reports that the next-generation iPad may start shipping as early as late February of 2011. Digitimes' Taiwanese sources claim that Foxconn, Apple's leading product manufacturer, will ship the next-gen iPad within the next 100 days, with an initial shipment run of 400,000-600,000 units.

The current iPad, announced in late January, was not available for sale in the US until early April (Wi-Fi only) and late April (3G). While a late February ship date for an unannounced iPad 2 may sound far too optimistic to be true, Digitimes has been a decent source of component-related rumors in the past. Over a month before the release of the iPhone 4, Digitimes described the then-forthcoming handset's internals to a tee, correctly describing the specs of the Retina Display and the CPU and RAM upgrades.

[via Mac Rumors]