A date for your iPad diaries!

Just a quick note to say that Apple have officially announced a press conference next week, to reveal their hotly anticipated ‘iPad 2’.

The conference will take place next Wednesday (March 2nd) at 10am PST (6pm GMT) and has the slogan ‘Come see what 2011 will be the year of’.

It will be very interesting to see what Apple have come up with this time. Last year, tablets were few and far between when Apple showed off the first version of the iPad. One year on and the market is saturated with them, particularly a growing amount of Android ones which can really rival the iPad. Apple will have to innovate and improve massively to stay in the game.

It will also be interesting to see how many of the rumours sprawled about the internet are true. Will it have USB and SD card support this time? How about front and rear facing cameras? Maybe the resolution will be at least 2x the originals, and perhaps it will be the slimmest piece of tech available.

We’re also likely to be treated to some more news from Apple (aside from their boring sales figures) such as a new version of iOS and some more news on what Mac OS X Lion will look like.

Perhaps the biggest question is who will host this conference seeing as CEO Steve Jobs is currently on leave from the company due to ill health.

If all goes to plan, I’ll be tweeting live throughout the conference so follow @chrisbheath for updates next Wednesday.