From FJ:
"Although we see this as more dilution the company probably sees much more in terms of ultimate shareholder value than most of us can appreciate."
Some of you are baseball fans, so I'm going to use a baseball analogy. If FJ were a catcher, he would be far and away the best at framing pitches there ever was!
I look at it more simply, they needed money (for whatever reason), and they decided that a public offering is their best alternative. For example, they may have signed a few NRE deals, and may have gotten the $10 to $15 million, but like Suresh said before, they don't want to do such deals until the tech is at a level with which they are at least initially satisfied. FJ has echoed that sentiment earlier today.
FJ, keep up the great work and informative posts. I just can't help myself sometimes, sitting here in my fortress of non-tech!! LOL.