Now you know how I feel Chris.
It is really different, but your point is to announce when you are ready, which is valid. I like to be able to order the day I see it, if its worth buying (which isn't obvious without a good review and a play of it, so all that needs to be sorted week one, review out with announcement, play with one at the dealer next week who has had a sample shipped to him as first ones come out). But that's very difficult, you don't known what you are dealing with as far as demand, and if you have 20k units made and the competition releases something way better at the same time, and undercuts your cost, you could be sitting with the 20k units for a while, and have to negotiate an unit production volume down turn with your manufacturing partners.
But, of course there are other problems. You may have your camera ready to use the sensor, which is supposed to be production ready by the date, but things don't tap out at the sensor factory and the sensor production design isn't finish, or the plant has delays. So, you have to sit around waiting for the missing part to turn up and start delivery 6 months after you planned, when everything was supposed to be ready. These sorts of things happen. But BM also would want to promote what was coming at the main show of the year, even if it was a few months early and gauge demand for production, to then find out there was additional delays. That's life.
I would expect BM to sell like 10-100k of these things by now frankly. Only 1k on backorder at the biggest mail order seller, might not be a really big thing.