While Apple prepares itself for the imminent iPad 3 announcement on March 7, something else has cropped up that deserves attention: the next iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6.

Ars Technica is reporting that its server logs have captured a listing of an iPad device running a seemingly odd version of iOS. While many are speculating the display specifications of the next iPad, not much attention has been given to the next iteration of iOS. Suffice it to say, this is just as exciting as the hardware update to the iPad.

From the article:

 [W]e began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple’s corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0. The whole listing shows iPads running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1 (the current public release), iOS 5.1 (the upcoming release currently available to developers), and iOS 6. The iPads that appear to be running iOS 6 are also using a slightly newer build of WebKit—the older OSes all show WebKit 534.46, while the ones claiming to be iOS 6 show WebKit build 535.8.

While Ars is not claiming that iOS 6 will be bundled with the iPad 3, this discovery does suggest that development into iOS 6 is well underway.

iOS 6 is trending. lol.

— Mark Gurman™ (@markgurman) March 2, 2012

What do you expect to see in iOS 6? Let the speculation begin.