Intel delaying QX9770 Penryn?

Oh, Intel. You had a real opportunity to make yourself look good by comparison, what, with all the recent delays going down at AMD. And what do you do? You take that opportunity and you squander it. First, it looked like you were delaying your mobile Penryns. But that wasn't the end of it, oh no. Now it looks like your QX9770 desktop part--your high-end, 3.2Ghz beast--is also getting the delay treatment. According to folks with their ear low to the ground in Taiwan (i.e. Digitimes), it appears that the Core 2 Extreme QX9770--the consumer counterpart to the high-end 3.2Ghz quad-core Xeon--will appear in February or March, rather than January. Adding insult to injury, the chip will allegedly retail for $1,399 in quantities of 1000--not $1,200 as was previously thought. Could this have something to do with the lack of competing parts from AMD in the channel during the next few months? Or that rumor we heard a while back that Apple was hogging all of Intel's top-bin Penryns? Only the folks at Intel know for sure and they're not talking.

For more on the rumor:
- see this Digitimes article