No, seriously, this pre-announcement will pull the rug out from underneath all other vendors - the Icarus/Lancelot guy in mainland China, Stefan in Germany, the British guys, the American guys with their 6500 board, even the genius-level bitstream guys like EldenTyrell and Bitfury.
It's going to be a bloodbath.
I am certain that is the general effect they are looking for with this particular announcement. Let's consider some facts, and how they might pertain to BFL's business model.
1) Enterpoint, a professional FPGA design and build house enters the market with introductory pricing competitive with the single. They communicate openly and credibly on the forums, report progress and problems, and are keeping to their promised schedule so far.
Q1) How does this impact the rate of new orders for BFL singles?
2) Enterpoint does not require any payment until product is ready to ship.
Q2) How does this affect orders for any BFL product when they are expecting payment up front with indefinite shipping times? Will customers continue to be willing to supply BFL with their working capital? (that means being an uncompensated investor since without escrow, their funds are being used for general operations)
3) Eldentyrell promises an announcement on his custom code for Spartans. Initial claims are 25%-50% faster than current bitstreams. The single will not benefit as they use a different FPGA. At the most optimistic levels, cost per hash on shipping quad boards could be lower than mini-rigs that still are not shipping.
Q3) How does this affect new orders for singles and mini-rigs?
Now as an exercise for the reader; imagine that you are running a company that relies on the cash from your order book to continue operating. Now imagine that the rate that new orders arrive suddenly declines. As you ship product off your order books you are losing working capital. Eventually this will result in a negative cash balance at your bank, even though you have a functioning business model.
What would you do?
Would you perhaps announce an imaginary future product even though you haven't shipped your previously announced product? Would you offer a trade in guarantee on existing products to try to refresh your order flow?
Personally, I would find investors to properly capitalize my business. Others might choose a path that exposes their customers to the risk of complete losses on their orders.