I think it's in everyone's interest that no ASIC hits the market before the block reward halving. Less volatility in the supply of BTC that way. Predicting an early December release from both BFL and Tom(caplepair).
You are no fun, we need like 2 weeks of
kaboom! to have stories to tell our grandkids about, and then get on with the craziness of ASIC adoption. Blocktimes are likely to go under 5 minutes anyway, softening the impact of the halving for 2-4 weeks:
"Date & Time Block Time Block Value
11/28/12 0:00 5.338700753 50
12/5/12 11:22 4.520922777 25
12/11/12 19:17 7.249945409 25
12/21/12 22:52 8.167824744 25
1/2/13 9:19 8.433939204 25
1/14/13 4:42 8.357994714 25
1/25/13 21:31 8.32945169 25
2/6/13 13:23 8.671654753 25
This is from a forecasting model based on the actual preorder numbers from Tom, ASIC lot Qty info from BFL, ASICMINER based on announcements in January, along with 2 waves of Avalons. Shipments of preorders are spread out over this whole section of difficulties for BFL, intial batch shipping within 2 weeks for Tom (WAY different sizes, does not reflect badly on BFL) and smaller follow-on batches every 2 weeks.