I think we're on the same page, though I didn't forget (conveniently or otherwise... if I forget, it is almost always inconvenient) that they take into consideration their competitors, let alone any single competitor. My point is that competitor intelligence is often incomplete and unreliable, as was shown to be the case with this specific competitor. Their pricing model may be (and this is pure speculation, I have no idea how they model their pricing other than what I've gleaned from the forums) putting too much weight on competitor intelligence.
On the same page are we !? .... that warms the cockles of my heart !
But you are delving into a very gray area, aka what would
you consider to be complete, reliable and
actionable competitor intelligence? In the same breath I'll add, what would
they consider as such? Bear in mind that the only distinction between you and they (aside from the spelling) is they have put down a few million (at the very least) of their hard earned fiat and you .... well, you are in a better position to answer that.
But back to the competitor intelligence. They (and everyone that cares) know(s) that next-gen tech is just around the corner. Bitfury (a B2B outfit) have already officially announced one such. The actionable part of intelligence, which is by no means readily attainable from any enterprise that has invested millions of fiat in R&D, is the timing of the going to market before a general announcement. For the bitcoin ASIC industry where next gen tech is literally released more often than usual, I think bitmain got it spot on. Yes, the price rise in the manner it came to be was not a pretty sight, but they were literally caught out by a matter of 20 minutes (or 3 hours at most!), and that on the most guarded of secrets in any industry. In my book, as far as their modelling goes, they can shake any of their collars!