Wondering when the next Apple iPad will be available for purchase? Early reports suggested April of 2011. Reuters (News - Alert) wants to get a better answer and in a Digital Trends report, it looks like they have been doing some digging.

Reuters has been seeking out companies known to supply components for Apple products and was able to get off-the-record comments from four suppliers. These companies shared that they are ramping up production of produced used in the current iPad, and two said they are ramping up production of components for use in a new iPad.

Only one supplier went so far as to say the next version of the Apple iPad will have both front- and rear-facing cameras.

Largan Precision and Genius (News - Alert) Electronic Optical are two suppliers that indicated they were starting new component supply agreements with Apple. Genius supplies a camera currently used in the iPhone (News - Alert) 4 and could very well be the supplier of choice for the iPad 2.

Other component suppliers in the market that have been identified as making parts of the next generation iPads include Wintek, a company making touchscreen controller chips, Simplo Technology that makes batteries, and Avy Precision, which develops covers for electronic devices.

The idea that a camera will be ready for the next iPad shouldn’t be a big surprise. Apple (News - Alert) had originally planned to include a camera in the first launch, but pulled the feature pretty late in the design phase. Reportedly, the current iPad includes empty slots that would fit an iPhone-sized camera module.

It is also possible that Apple is working on an enterprise-level and possibly parental-controls support for disabling the camera. This would allow corporations to decide how to use the camera on the iPad and parents to control whether or not the kids will access the camera.

The appearance of cameras in future iPad models would continue to support Apple’s FaceTime video chat feature that debuted on the iPhone 4 and is now available for Mac OS X. Let’s just hope the video element can run on something other than the AT&T (News - Alert) network.