there have been a few news reports that intel is backlogged because of the 10mm die debacle (3.5 years behind in development) - and that's caused a surplus of demand on the 14mm die CPUs.
I was on Newegg's (USA) and amazon's(USA) pre-order list, and on Nov 2 got a notice from Newegg that they had a shipment in hand, within 60 minutes of that email's rcpt i called in and was told they were already sold out - the CSR was user friendly and went to see when the next shipment was due - came back saying they expected a shipment of 100 units on Nov 30th (that's for the Newegg US market, 100 units total)
i found one earlier this week overseas in UK, Overclockers UK, and they had and still have some OEM units - OEM means it comes to...