Regarding your edit, hasn't Nvidia done that multiple times too? Didn't they skip the 800 series (it was mobile only) and weren't the 100 series rebranded 9000 series and the 300 series rebranded 200 series?
I wouldn't be surprised if they have. Their proprietary CUDA gimmicks are much worse. But with AMD supporting the OpenCL open platform, there is some hope of do-no-evil. But they keep disappointing.