It should be noted that they announced it at DevCon. Apart from keeping investors happy, the idea was to let the developers know that such a product is coming and to let them know the tools that they can use to develop for it. Its only slightly different from the WP7 announcement. I believe RIM is releasing (or has released) the SDK. The SDK definitely needed to be announced and provided to developers 5-6 months before product hits shelves so I dont see why other people have a problem with it.