A company will make an initial run to introduce the product, test the market, test production processes, and see if any problems creep up after the public initial offering. Once that initial run has been out in the street for a few weeks, then they go back with any changes that may need to happen and gear up for a production run. When the company places that big production order, it usually takes China 16-22 weeks to ramp up production. Usually if there is a high demand, the company will try to FLY units over to meet some of the need while waiting on the full production run to arrive by container ship.
I feel the pain, I've been waiting on mine since around March 1st. Finally it says less than a week!!! I called Thursday since it had been a full week and I was told mine would ship on the 1st or 2nd. My guess is the shipment finally arrived!
When dealing with production problems, getting all the parts from all the other manufactures, holidays in China, customs, getting it across the pond, there are just too many variables to put an exact date on anything. I don't know of a single manufacture that tells the public much of anything until they have stock on the units. Ableton is not acting out of the ordinary. This thing just took off like a bullet!
To all the people who purchased something else.....Oh well.... You'll probably purchase one sooner or later. To all the people gripping, no one is forcing you to purchase this unit and you know how long the wait before you purchased it. I'm anxious too!!! I check my order every day, along with this forum, Reddit, and more..... but all this is expected. It's almost over, the shipments seem to be flowing and pretty much right on schedule.
Now ABLETON......please get me mine before the 4th Holiday Weekend!!!!
Mike