erik malund wrote:
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(the state of the distribution chain.)

Yes, I agree - getting a dev board through a distributor took me well over a month, urging the company several times, having the arrival date shifted twice, and such. That was after a painful experience with encoders - "It will take 2 months". Okay, so I patiently wait 2 months, then 2 months and a week later, I call them only to hear "Sorry, but we don't fulfill orders lower than 5 pieces, your order has been cancelled". Of course 2 months wasted out of 5-month deadline... :(

For me, samples from Maxim arrived in whooping 2 days! I couldn't believe it... Regular mail, no "priority", no "shipping services", no problems, to my mailbox. The limit is 1-2 pieces though - 8 kinds of items.

After that I decided to try my luck with some more...

Texas Instruments ships through UPS which appeared to be a lot of harrasment as I had to sign and send some documents together with xero of my ID, tax identification number etc. So, instead of 3 days as "promised" it took 2 weeks, some 4 emails, 1 snailmail with 3 pages printed, 2 xero'ed etc - but the samples arrived okay. Limit on number of samples is regulated by price/availablity of a device (like, 1 NV-SRAM die, 2 microcontrollers, 10 single NOR gates) Up to 8 kinds of items.

Analog Devices instead of shipping to "shipping address" as indicated, shipped to street address of my school. (for which I registered as "company") - luckily a friend of mine is responsible for receiving the mail there so he put them aside for me. Besides, AD seems to have too much free money on their hands, I ordered 3 items, 2 of them have been backordered with different shipment times, they sent 2 of them in 2 separate mails already, I'm still waiting for the 3rd one...
Limit: 2 pcs of 3 kinds of items. Shipping through TNT parcel service, no problems.

Fairchild: Limit 3 kinds, variable number, FedEX. The shipping took some time, but no problems.

I also tried a few others but they didn't respond. Maybe I'm blind or my browser was broken but I didn't find Philips shipping outside US, Agilent promised to review my registration within 2 business days and I never heard from them again, no reply from Hitachi, Intel sent me an invitation to a poll with prizes for participating, but no samples, Siemens - I think I didn't find samples section at all...

Almost always some items have been backordered.
Besides, what might help other than company: Promise them that after "more than 12 months" your demand will be 5000-10000 pieces a year. (after all, we all can dream...)