You know, from a flavour perspective, I actually approve of this a whole lot. New Eden's a fast-moving world and the fact that new ships, modules and technology only get released on a suspiciously regular twice-yearly basis doesn't make all that much sense. I mean, for balance reasons they can't release only one race's ship in a new ship class first (which would make the most sense - the weight of historical evidence tends to be that either the Caldari or the Minmatar come up with something new and then rush it to market, the Gallente release their own version of it second after a few weeks of polish and the Amarr almost always trail in last place). The new update schedule will allow them to release new content (i.e. ships, modules, technology upgrades) more regularly, which better reflects how fast-moving science and technology is in New Eden.
From an out-of-character perspective, it's pretty much a logical evolution of the "Expansion 1.1" system they've been using for a long time anyway - we've been receiving smaller updates and bursts of content roughly every six weeks for a while now.