I ve read a very nice piece on Bitcoin mining these days, basically comparing mining rig to a golden goose, very interesting. It sums up to the following, why would ASIC manufacturers sell their machines if they can use them for mining:
This is a very naive perspective that misapplies the experience of a small basement operation to a large enterprise.
Once you're talking about the volume that an ASIC manufacturer would produce, there are two EXTREMELY critical issues that come into play --
(1) Building equipment in order to mine instead of sell exposes the manufacturer to an additional level of risk that they might not be interested in taking on;
(2) It's not trivial at all to design and administer a facility in which to house all of this mining equipment.
Most of these manufacturers state reaching ROI in about 3-6 months. If this is really the case, only a total fool would sell instead of mine, regardless of any obstacle they might face.
Apart from reasons already stated, the only reason to sell which comes to my mind is that most of these companies are not sufficiently capitalized to develop their own products. To overcome this, they sell preorders, get your money, develop the product, use it for MINING for a few months and then deliver to you when it almost useless.
An excellent business model, whoever started this first should be nominated for Nobel prize in economics.
