Now that CES 2012 is over, the iPad rumor mill is getting into full swing. It’s pretty much accepted wisdom in the tech world that the Apple iPad 3 will need to pack a quad-core processor to avoid being wiped out by that 7-inch Transformer Prime when it arrives for $250 in Q2.

Also widely expected is a higher-res display, though whether Apple offers a Retina quality screen is not yet known for certain. One source at one of Apple’s manufacturing partners claimed last week that Apple aims to reach full output of the iPad 3 in February. Others wonder whether the new iPad will offer LTE support, which sources claim is more likely to happen before any LTE-enabled iPhone arrives thanks to the iPad’s bigger battery, which would be better able to sustain the high battery juice toll of LTE support. Watch this space for more definite updates.

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Apple is reported to be considering starting streaming movies from the Cloud. Discussions are underway between Apple and some movie studios.

Ultimately users should be able to stream movies to their iOS devices from the iCloud, without having to store the content on their portable device.

Currently Netflix and LoveFilm offer apps for the same type of service. Until now, the Apple iCloud service has only provided cloud-based storage or streaming for music, photos and documents. The tier-based service offers 5GB of gratis online storage, but users can buy more space. Apple is known to be keen to get a foothold in the movie-streaming market.

Strong unofficial sales figures indicate that Apple shouldn’t hurry to replace its iPad 2, despite competition from both high- and low-end slates. Budget tablets such as Amazon Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet were expected to eat into sales of Apple iconic tablet. High-specced premium tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the quad-core Transformer Prime, now available for pre-order, also seemed attractive alternatives to Apple iPad 2.

Normally we would expect to see the device discounted as the launch of an upgrade approaches, which has been Apple standard policy with the iPhone 3GS, 4 and iPhone 4S and Macbooks. Yet analysts now expect Apple to shift 13.5 million iPad 2 units in Q4, which would mean Apple is selling 68% more iPads per hour than a year ago. On Black Friday 2010, Apple sold on average 8.8 iPads per hour in each of its retail stores, and this year’s figure was 14.8.