To my knowledge, from having worked on numerous VLSI/ASIC projects (and thus knowing the development process and realities of getting from idea to trays of packaged dies on your desk), and from looking at the thread over on litecointalk and jasinlee's comments about where they're at..  I don't believe they have actually finished the design and taped it out for a prototype run yet, which would need to happen before they even know if the design works.  Let alone scheduled production quantities with a fab after verifying the prototype functions and performs as expected, which is generally a long lead-time proposition.

That's my viewpoint from having undertaken scrypt ASIC development late last year.  Only we spun our own ASICs for our own mining operation, not to sell to others.  The oft-repeated "the merchants get rich off the miners backs" analogy is applicable to gold mining in the 1800's.  In the context of cryptocurrency mining, that's just silly.  The ones that actually won are the ones that got there first while difficulty was still nice and low.