Very useful words to keep in the communication between any company and its customers. Its not a promise. Just a rough outline of what things you are planning to do.
Some companies use phrases like this to let their customer base know “hey this is what we think we are going to be able to deliver” without having to promise a specific quarter or date. Sometime things don’t work out as you planned (Airpower anyone ??)
But stating something like this is useful for helping customers understand product direction and what things are more important than others. If you don’t plan to ship something for years then don’t say anything about it until it has a reasonable prospect of being in a shipping product within the next year.
Now there’s ALWAYS the implied “oh but things could come along that waylay our plans”- and that’s the beauty of “we expect to”. Its NOT a promise like if you had said “and it will be available in October”. This is very definite (will) and a promise of when (October).
Googling “microsoft says it expects” or “apple says it expects” you will find a lot of articles that have this phrase in them. These huge companies use this kind of talk all the time to set expectations. And for any company setting & managing expectations is a big deal.
*Edited to correct typos