KnC has stated many times that they were looking to aim to the higher segment of the market, because scaling up to massive demand was difficult.
Indeed, if they are big enough is always better to deal with fewer, bigger customers, than more small customers.
The fact they are backtracking so fast looks like a bad omen to me.
Pshaw. There's what you'd like to do and there's what the market wants. They have long conducted a poll on their site and clearly most interest is in a cheaper device. They're not doing one in the hundreds-of-dollars range like BFL that would give them thousands of customers or w/e, this is a $2k device that is a good compromise between their aim to do a higher-cost device and avoid masses of customers logistically.
They already said in a subtle way that the chips order was not placed yet as they were still discussing "how much" with the fab, and figuring out "how many".
They also said the order would be placed the week after the Mars promo.
I hope this new, smaller unit does not mean they need more preorders before being able to place the chip order.
Now I will get slaughtered by the wishful thinkers who have wet dreams about KnC delivering in August. Good enough, I know my assumptions are based on rational and cold analysis of facts and not on hopes or emotion driven conclusions.
Your assumptions are, like everyone else's here, simply an attempt at building reasonable inductive likelihoods. Some put more or less emphasis on different aspects and conclude different things.
And those who perceive the state of things closest to the reality that actually results will be the most rewarded.