I love my Mini, and I'd LOVE a retina Mini in March!
Unfortunately, its flat not going to happen for all sorts of reasons. The well discussed technical reasons, and the small matter of Apple wanted to milk at least another six months out of Mini 1 sales. Seriously, why the **** would they supersede a product that has six months more strong sales in it? I know the Mini is old tech, but do you think it cost nothing in r&d and manufacture time? Apple like money, and a 6 month upgrade to the mini makes no financial sense, and this is disregarding the unlikely emergence of a physically identical Mini with same battery life and more power hungry screen. Remind me, who's mass producing 2048x1536 7.9" screen in massive quantities right now? Don't cite 1080p displays like the J-Butterfly phone, they don't have to have 2+ million units ready to ship at launch. Good grief, there's some myopic people out there.
One six month iPad cycle and Apple are apparently 6 months every time now, lol. There's all sorts of legitimate reasons why the iPad 4 hit so soon after the 3 - lightning, CPU finally ready, 3s gpu not ideal for the res (although, v happy 3 owner here), realigning to an Xmas release - but I'm yet to hear a similar cogent argument for a March Mini. So much stead is placed on what some random analyst says, crikey.