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With overclocking, it's probably just the standard caveats:

* It might damage your hardware (although this seems unlikely for merely changing memory speeds)
* Your software might become unstable (BSODs and crashes out of nowhere)
* Not every unit is equal, so you might have to keep returning products and buying new ones until you get the lucky one

I don't know any specific reason why they would support one speed but not another slightly faster one. Usually, a few months later the same manufacturer will release a similar product that does support the faster speed. So it is clearly not difficult to do.

My guess would be that when a new speed becomes common in the consumer market, the manufacturer doesn't want to slow down product development by telling all the in-progress products to halt and update their design. Only product cycles that begin afterwards incorporate the new speed, and even then, they don't always bother. A simple release of a new processor or memory chip is also not enough for them to decide to support it - they might be waiting for some nebulous "consumer traction" first. So they lag behind the latest speed by about the length of their product development cycle.

Generally, memory speed doesn't seem to matter much for performance and most consumers don't care about it much. A lot of those that do care, don't actually understand what it does, but just believe the marketing, which can be done regardless of technical features. So there's not much reason for manufacturers to be very strict about supporting the fastest memory speeds.

Also, looking at their products as a whole, these companies seem pretty hit and miss. I think it's not a stretch to conclude that they are, to some extent, mismanaged and have incompetent product managers. We can't expect them to release products that perfectly fit the needs of the market even if they wanted to.