Maybe they haven't found that one hardware configuration yet.
There is a chance that the rumours of a console could also be true as well though. There's no reason why they couldn't have a Linux console /AND/ desktop Linux support.
Without any real knowledge of the industry, extrapolation to back up my point seems fraught with error. How much of Intel's progress has been the low hanging fruit, and is that last 10% going to take 90% of the time? And what measures would you actually use to measure progress?