SAN FRANCISCO (CNET) -- Two years ago on Jan. 27, Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs took to the stage to unveil what was perhaps one of the most-rumored devices the company had ever concocted.

The iPad, or as it had been imagined the "iSlate," was unveiled this day in 2010 at an intimate event in downtown San Francisco. The tablet was pitched as a new category of device that would fit between a smartphone and a notebook, while presenting distinct advantages.

"It's so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smartphone," Jobs said.

In the run up to the event, speculation reached new heights over what exactly Apple would announce. The world had settled on the fact that it would be a tablet, but the details on what that would entail were all over the place.

Price estimates ranged from $500 to $2,000. Reports surfaced on components, including the suggestion that Apple was planning to use OLED screens (it didn't). There was even this "spy shot" of a very un-iPad-like device doubling as a phone.

What we got was a 9.7-inch touch-screen tablet with Apple's A4 processor and running iOS. It was the first such device in Apple's lineup to use one of Apple's A-line chips, which the company later ended up using in the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV set-top box.

The consensus among the press was "let's wait and see," primarily because the device was not going on sale until April. Others took a decidedly more opinionated approach, declaring it as anything from the next big thing to Apple's biggest mistake yet.

Apple has sold 55.28 million iPads since launching in April 2010. That figure's current up to December 31, 2011--the end of Apple's most recently reported fiscal quarter. An estimate thrown out by Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu earlier this month suggested Apple would sell another 48 million iPads in 2012 alone.

The biggest quarter yet for iPads was Q4 2012, with the company selling 15.43 million units. That's a 111 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago. To put that in perspective, Apple sold 32 million iPads during all of its fiscal 2011.

Now all eyes are on the company to announce a new model within the next few months, perhaps even unveiling it at a press conference in February. If you want to believe Taiwanese component news site DigiTimes, Apple's already on its way to production on two different models that will stretch the iPad line to three variants.

What will Apple add this time around? The big new feature is expected to be the screen, with Apple moving to a QXGA panel. In plain English, that's a screen with higher pixel density the likes of what you find on the so-called Retina Display on late model iPhones and iPod Touches. That's a rumor that was floating around well ahead of the iPad 2's introduction last year.

More recently, Bloomberg put out a story piling on to the QXGA panel chatter, adding that the device will feature a quad-core chip and 4G LTE wireless networking.

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