Official announcement: EOS 1D X is the new Canon DSLR flagship

The Canon 1D X is now officially announced! It will come out in March 2012 with a starting price of $6800. That's half a pregnancy away! As rumored, it will have a 18mp 35mm-full-frame CMOS sensor, 12fps burst mode, dual DiGiC 5+ processors, and lots more. Check all the juicy details in the articles below...

Morning After Announcement round-up
+ pictures of the actual camera body at CNet Asia
+ text-based short impressions at PDN (towards the bottom of the page)
+ machine gun (burst mode) short video at CNet Asia
+ tiny tiny samples at Canon Japan (via David Lee Tong)
+ 90-second gear-pr0n commercial at CPN Europe
+ opinions in general at Photo Club Alpha, Kirk Tuck, Photofocus, PFFs
+ opinions on the video specs at DSLR News Shooter (and also video triggers) and Philip Bloom, EoS-HD, Wide Open
+ Spanish announcement at Quesabesde
+ announcement event in Poland at Optyczne.pl (computer-translated)
+ Canon Europe promotional video on YouTube (3 minutes 20 seconds) (via Pocket Lint):

ANNOUNCEMENT NIGHT round-up
Below you will find the announcement night round-up...

Overviews
+ overview at Imaging Resource
+ overview Galbraith
+ overview at dpreview
+ overview at Planet 5D
+ 12-page technical article at CPN Europe [NEW!]

Press Release parade
+ dpreview
+ Canon Rumors
+ Photography Review
+ Le Monde de la Photo
+ Photo Review
+ Steve's Digicams
+ PDN Pulse
+ Focus Numerique
+ DC Watch Impress
+ Digital Camera Info
+ Photoscala
+ DCR
+ Foto Intern
+ recap at Pop Photo
+ this is the 20th interchangeable lens camera announced in 2011 (out of 190)

Also announced: Accessories
+ WFT-E6 and WFT-E6A wireless transmitter for $600
+ GP-E1 GPS receiver for $300
+ details via Galbraith, Pop Photo, et al

Milestones
+ they also announced 50 million SLR bodies and 70 million lenses made - via Imaging Insider, et al
+ the SLR-to-lenses ratio is not as close since compatible lenses are also made by Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Zeiss, Samyang, et al

What do you think?

Pre-announcement Action
The "waiting for the announcement" part is after the jump for historical purposes...

Waiting for a Canon announcement (it looks like there is one coming)
Time for some fun, a wait-a-thon for a Canon announcement, assuming there is going to be one... All times mentioned in the blog-post are New York City time (check time zones)...

+ 12:38am: ThePhoBlographer opines on the leaked specs

+ 12:07am: A PDF file with the specs appeared on the Nikkei website (since removed), summary at Foto Actualidad where we learn of a dual-core DIGIC 5 and double CF card slots

+ 12:05am: Is this the end of the megapixel war, at least for flagship professional DSLRs? asks I Shoot Shows

+ 11:49pm: discussions in various forums: dpreview Canon 1D/1Ds, Fred Miranda, Photography On the Net, etc...

+ 11:31pm: it turns out the 1D Mark X name was officially-leaked in an earlier Canon press release touting their 70 million lenses and 50 million EOS cameras - via Foto Actualidad, Photography Bay

+ 11:25pm: Video-related specs are trickling out at EOS HD [site experiencing technical difficulties, try also their RSS feed which is hosted by Feedburner so it is not affected by the web server overload]

+ 11:23pm: a new GPS and Bluetooth gadget is also coming says Canon Rumors

+ 11:03pm: The Xitek forums [computer-translated] and the "Jackie Chan indicator" seem to confirm this notes Rice High [corrected link]

+ 10:58pm: It will be smart for Canon to get the announcement out as soon as possible. By tomorrow night this time, all the tech blogs and techies/geeks/nerds are going to be obsessing heavily with the new Google-Samsung super-mega-Android Ice Cream sandwich phone...

+ 10:37pm: Canon Rumors has posted what might be the press release for a rumored Canon 1D X unified flagship dSLR, with the same main specs (18mp full frame, 12fps (and 14fps JPEGs)). This latest rumor is discussed in the Canon Rumors forum.

+ 10:35pm: Since we are talking Canon and future, Photography Bay has spotted a Canon patent that talks of a Digital Rebel with a touch-screen and built-in Wifi... As you may recall recalling, the T3i/600D was not greeted as a liberator like the T2i/550D, so Canon cannot probably get away with a "more of the same" T5i/650D if/when they release that one..