The various Reports have stated that while the recorders appear to have withstood the accident. The Data on them as so far been unable to be retrieved.
Under normal circumstances, the data can be read by the investigating organisation, this is often carried out by an independent country so there is no conflict of intrest, eg in this case, not French, German or New Zeland. Often the Canadian investigation organisation do it. The BEA should and would have the capability to download and read the FDR and CVR data.
So for them to be sent to the manufacturer has indicated that they have not been able to retrieve the data.
To explain how simple it is to download. Just last night i downloaded the FDR data from an aircraft to confirm a fault that had been picked up had been corrected. This was as simple as pluging into the FDR while still in the aircraft and copying the data to a memory card. The card then being sent to a FDR data interpretation specialist, who is physically just down the road from our airport.
Its not a difficult task and does not normally need the FDR manufacturer to retrieve.
The unretreivable data issue my be a misinterpretation in that Honeywell may have been selected as the independent Data recovery source. So perhaps there is not issue.