I think everyone is overplaying the "announcement" aspect vis a vis the release of the phone. Most of the sources that members here deem credible have pointed towards Nov 3 as the release date. There was speculation that it may be October 27, but either way all signs point to one of these two dates. My rationale is that as noted in several posts above, iPhone - regardless of what we all seem to agree is inferior hardware and possibly software, is selling out units at all the carriers. Think about it, every time someone signs a new contract they're out of the pool of potential Nexus Prime buyers, regardless of carrier. If you believe the notion that Verizon has the exclusive release it's worse. Each of those other carriers selling iPhones right now are preventing a possible migration to your business. Granted, some of these people may have never considered the NP because they buy anything Apple, but not everyone falls into this category.
The bottom line is this: I always thought releasing the Nexus AFTER the iPhone was a risky strategy because of the ideas noted above. iPhone sold 2.3 million units in the last quarter on Verizon - more than all Android devices combined. The point is that Samsung/Google/Verizon need this phone to be released sooner rather than later. To that point, there's simply zero chance this phone releases Q1 2012, as some have rumored. I'd mortgage my house on that. It's that simple and logical in my mind.