ASUS’ highly-anticipated Eee Pad Transformer Prime has been pushed to early December, according to “sources from an upstream supply chain.”

DigiTimes reports that the sources confirm that Google has signed on to provide assistance to “help the machine to natively feature Android 4.0.” The tablet was originally set to launch with Android 3.2 Honeycomb earlier, possibly on November 9th.

So it looks like ASUS is waiting to get the brand new Ice Cream Sandwich OS in its new tablet. The news that they release date has been pushed at least a month will upset some, but it’s probably comforting for some to hear that the tablet will come already loaded with Ice Cream Sandwich – no “waiting for an update” (see Droid RAZR).

The sources add:

Since Google has cold-shouldered Taiwan-based PC brand vendors over the assistance of upgrading from Android 3.0 to 4.0, it has prompted these vendors to turn their focus from Android to Microsoft’s Windows 8, the sources noted.

So reaching out and helping the tablet upgrade from 3.2 to 4.0 might help Google in the long run.

According to ASUS, the Transformer Prime will be a faster, stronger, slimmer (and sexier) tablet and will be the first to feature NVIDIA’s bext-gen quad-core chip, which they say makes the device blazing fast.

If this rumor proves accurate, are you bummed about having to wait for the tablet? Or is it worth it to have ICS? Let us know in the comments.