Supply chain sources tell China’s Economic Daily News that Apple has lined up four new component suppliers for the iPhone 5, which they claim is scheduled for a summer launch. Meanwhile, Taiwanese trade pub DigiTimes is reporting that Apple recently bolstered its printed circuit board (PCB) supply chain in preparation for the next iteration of the iPad. Where the company once used just three PCB suppliers for the device, it’s now using seven. Not a surprise, really, given the 14.8 million iPads Apple sold in 2010. DigiTimes’ sources claim they’re scheduled to begin small-volume shipments next month, before going all out in April. Which jibes nicely with that annual refresh cycle I mentioned earlier and rumors of a spring launch.

As I’ve noted here before, the iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

Skype did not confirm the price, which was rumored to be about $100 million, according to BusinessInsider.com.

Skype said Qik has 60 employees, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and has an office in Moscow, Russia, and that it expects to close the transaction later this month.

Qik runs on more than 200 mobile phones, including Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. It also comes preloaded on a wide variety of mobile handsets through valuable ç it has inked with handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. The partnerships helped rocket Qik’s growth. At the beginning of 2010, Qik had 600,000 users, and it ended the year with five million.

Qik has been trying to position itself as the alternative to Apple’s FaceTime application, which allows people to make video-conferencing calls from their iPhone 4. However, one of the biggest complaints about Qik is lack of integration into a users’ phone book. Presumably, Skype could bring some of that functionality to the table since many users already have built up their address book within their interface.

Skype also mentioned it plans to take advantage of Qik’s engineering expertise for optimizing video transmission over wireless networks. One cool feature that Qik has, and Skype doesn’t, is that it allows people to share videos in real time, and also record and store them to view later.

Nvidia, which builds tiny computer processors to help devices display graphics, games, video and more on phones, will be found all over the show floor, demonstrating products in conjunction with wireless carriers, automotive makers, handset makers and others.

And for those looking for even more from Huang –and maybe a demo that works– he’ll be appearing on stage with my colleague Ina Fried at our own D at CES event on Friday.

The biggest partnership of all, however, was not announced–a rumored relationship with Microsoft that will likely be unveiled later today, Huang hinted. [Update: that news can be found here.]

What Nvidia was willing to talk about was its plans to build high-performance ARM-based CPU cores, designed to support future products ranging from personal computers and servers to workstations and supercomputers. Up until now, the project was code-named “Project Denver.”

However, Nvidia spent most of the time talking about its new Tegra 2 processor, which is designed to efficiently display Internet content and games–on par with the quality of a console–on a cellphone. That means a compact design that provides the same quality but helps preserve battery life.

Nvidia’s Huang demonstrated the capabilities of the chip with the help of LG, which made an appearance onstage to show off the new Optimus 2X, a new Android phone. Loaded with a Tegra 2, one of the head honchos from LG described the phone as “a beauty on the outside–a monster on the inside.”

Huang plugged the phone into a giant HDTV to demonstrate the chip’s capabilities. He played Angry Birds and navigated a few apps on the homescreen.

But one of the big pushes is in viewing Adobe Flash, and the demo gods were against them. The wireless network was slow, prompting Huang to ask the packed crowd of reporters to spare a bit of bandwidth for him.

“I feel like I am on 56K here,” Huang said. “Oh you guys suck,” he joked.

Huang said the company brought in technology to block others from hogging the bandwidth, but people were using it anyway. “You guys really suck,” he said to more laughs.

More demonstrations were made with videogames, and even other demos failed, including a video chat over Skype.

After it was all said and done, Nvidia served lunch.

The move is especially interesting because Adams had prepared an influential slide deck about the shortcomings of today’s social networks that was widely circulated online as well as within Facebook. Originally presented at the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in June, “The Real Life Social Network” has been viewed more than 400,000 times since being posted on SlideShare.

For Adams to join the opposition is obviously not a vote of confidence for Google and its much-maligned plans to offer more social products.

Adams, who had spent four years on the Google user experience team, didn’t specify what his new gig at Facebook will be. At Google he had worked on products such as Gmail, Latitude and YouTube, according to his bio. Adams is also the author of the forthcoming book “Social Circles.”

After seeing Adams’s tweet this afternoon, I took some time to replay his 224-slide presentation.

In the last five months, Facebook released a Groups feature that addresses some of the problems Adams identified in online social networking, but his ideas and principles have not gone stale. Adams’s main thesis is that online social networks have not evolved to accurately portray and extend the offline social networks people have had forever. He compares Facebook friend lists and IM chat contacts to the awkwardness of planning a wedding seating chart, where people from all parts of your life come together.

While tools like email exist to help people communicate with those they are most strongly tied to, and services like Facebook help us keep track of our “weak ties,” Adams speaks of a need for a third model of “temporary ties” that recede after a short-term period, like an eBay transaction. He also talks about the opportunity to capitalize on the high degree of influence that friends have on each other’s purchases.

Adams proposes that people will increasingly need to have more than one online profile, and that online social products must be designed with privacy and trust at top of mind. He says well-designed social products must communicate to users the consequences of their actions.

These are interesting principles, but they’re hardly a blueprint for Google’s long-awaited social offerings and upgrades. The big difference is that now Facebookers can go straight to the source rather than being a few of the 400,000 people to view Adams’s ideas and research online.

Please note: As disclosed in my ethics statement, my husband is a part-time researcher on the Facebook user experience team.

Here’s a really fun video of Ustream’s top 10 live moments of 2010.

The most-watched stream was, no surprise, the rescue of the Chilean miners, but Justin Bieber and Kayne West also scored.

The winners on the live video platform include, in descending order:

10. Disneyland’s “World of Color” Live
9. Golden Globe Awards Red Carpet Live
8. Ochocinco’s Live Date
7. Taylor Swift’s Exclusive Album Announcement
6. “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” Premiere Live
5. Kanye West’s First Ustream
4. Justin Bieber on AMAs Backstage Live
3. Snoop Dogg’s Live Mafia Wars Stunt
2. Paul McCartney’s Live Chat With Fans
1. Live Chilean Miner Rescue

Enjoy:

Head on over to teachparentstech.org and you’ll find a little Web form, shrouded in faux brown paper, where you can assemble your virtual tech-support care package.

After selecting to whom it should be addressed, you can pick from about 50 very short videos to attach to the message that the form creates. The videos feature fresh-faced Googlers in brightly colored shirts using plain English and screen-capture video to explain how to do things like resize a photo, use Google chat, get driving directions or find the nearest pizza place.

And the tech subjects seem to be pretty expertly selected as well (we’ve been asked to help our parents on more than a few of these specific problems).

After selecting a salutation, the videos you want to send and an appropriate closing remark, the form spits out a page that can be forwarded to the email of the desired tech noob.

We spoke with Jason Toff, a product marketing manager at Google and the informal leader of teachparentstech. He said that the project was built on the 20 percent time Google gives some staff members to work on separate projects outside of their assignments, and that it was really born out of a need found among his youngish Googley colleagues.

“The idea of parents needing tech support around the holidays really resonated with our core group of about six people. We just sent some emails out to some internal list serves expecting to get a lukewarm response, and over 50 people responded wanting to be in videos explaining some simple tech,” Toff said during our phone call.

Toff said there weren’t any other plans to build out additional products on the teachparentstech domain right now, but he’s hoping to see how this first thing goes and learn from it.

The site went live as of about 9:30 PT this morning and by noon had sent out over 3,000 virtual care packages.

The one pro tip we got from Toff was that if you care to see all the videos available, maybe to do a power-training session, you can head to teachparentstech.org/watch where all the available videos are displayed together.

Now, if only Google would buy up santagr.am and santatracker.com, our very Google holiday would be complete.

Industry sources are telling the occasionally reliable DigiTimes that Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, will begin shipping the next-generation tablet within the next 100 days in preparation for a spring debut that will follow the launch of the original iPad by about a year. The iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.