I think all the ASIC manufacturers jumped the gun in their announcement in an effort to generate buzz and capture market share through pre-orders that lock up the money from going to a competitor. Honestly, it seems like none of them should have even announced anything until December since they all seem to be in the prototype (at best) stage.
The problem with that strategy is that although historically the folks behind the ASICS (BFL, Avalon, etc.) have a track record of actually delivering a product (specs or real world performance aside), it breeds distrust since they have to continually play this game of "IT MIGHT DROP EARLIER THAN X" countered with "BECAUSE OF X, IT WONT HAPPEN UNTIL RELEASE DATE"
PERSONALLY, I don't think we'll see units shipped until late Jan/early Feb at the earliest. It seems that all the manufacturers are still prototyping live hardware beyond the emulated prototypes. So that's my vote