Putting a stake in the ground and saying you’ll ship something before it’s ready is a risky strategy. Apple showed that this week when they announced that their long-awaited ‘AirPower’ wireless charging system won’t ship, citing development difficulties.
There are a handful of reasons why an organisation like Apple might pre-announce a product. To create hype, to allow 3rd parties to develop ancillary products, to prevent loyal customers buying 3rd party alternatives and wait for the official version, to avoid any perception that you might be behind in a competitive arms race, to name but a few.
You could argue that cancelling the project caused some reputational damage.
Shipping a sub-par product, or one that only had a portion of the promised feature-set would have caused more.