That is a terrible idea. The current generation of peripherals isn't set up to work seamlessly with thunderbolt, and a lot of low cost options are still sold. Thunderbolt isn't appropriate for those, even according to intel. There are a lot of things you can buy with multiple connection types. External hard drives can sometimes connect via usb, esata, or firewire. If thunderbolt displaced firewire in these kinds of devices, you could begin to see leverage. That would also require that intel push such a thing, and intel still owns the rights to every bit of it aside from the mini displayport connector. Personally I think going with mini displayport was a bad choice there, as Apple still owns it. Under normal circumstances, there is no licensing fee, yet it's not an open standard.
It seems like our point of disagreement is on timing. I doubt they're going to lose contracts for a number of devices on this one, as long as their release cycle is predictable and consistent. In this regard meeting their shipping date predictions would be more important. This way their customers can effectively plan their own product lines. Given the moves to smaller and smaller processes, the potential is there for others to slip up too.
