People waited because
1) Even without multirom they could still their Gateway. 9.2 users currently can't.
2) There was no competition. People now can run over to Sky3DS, and even if they're on 9.4.
3) There were no competition to lose customers to back then. But customers who turn their back on Gateway now, will have no reason to come back if they can enjoy the games they want to play.
And gateway clearly doesn't care about having sky3ds as competition as they're two very different products.
Gateway has a lot of high quality features such as region free, a good fast rom selector and game dumping that you can't get on sky3ds but you can't use the latest firmware. They can also upgrade firmware so that you don't have to buy a new cartridge.
Sky3ds only does the absolute basics of rom loading without region free, but can be used on the latest firmware. They can't upgrade firmware and need a new card purchase for new features.
They are just very different products, gateway doesn't care about that sort of competition.