I don't believe it's an application limit issue, I haven´'t come accross any information that sugests that. However, I have no clue as to what could be considered as a real estimated processing time for applications (SDS and Non SDS). You can see in a lot of forums that there are cases that receive a decision very fast (around 4 weeks) and there are people with more than 10 months without a decision. I believe it's on a case to case basis and also the region has a lot to do with the processing time.
In the end, let's hope everybody receives a decision before their startingd date.