A lot of makers have bet big on tablets so I expect the dual-core releases to come there first. They'll make it to phones later, but dual-core and other bleeding-edge tech and speed will be best displayed on tablets.
As for smartphones, I think we've reached a bit of a lull because of the LTE/Wimax/4G rollouts. Phonemakers want to be able to sell with this feature, and they're still somewhat limited by the US carriers. Tablets don't suffer from this because people don't have the same expectations of always on, always fast, gimme everything with tablets as they do with smartphones.
All that said, I don't see any new phones being all that special. I also think there's some hesitance because iPhone coming to VZW will have an impact. Not sure what yet, but it will be a noticeable impact. I definitely think there's widespread analyst underestimation of what's going to happen to ATT, which will suffer more than the expected losses.