Take any leading ASIC miners hardware manufacturer an you'll notice at least 4-6 months of waiting period on their state-of-the-art hardware pre-orders. They say the devices in question are under development and there is no guarantee they'll be available within certain period of time.
This got me into thinking: how would you know if they haven't completed the development of the hardware and have started mining Bitcoins themselves? If you think of the profits, it all makes sense.
For the sake of an example, let's consider the
600 GH/s card from Butterfly Labs. They're accepting pre-orders for $4680. Now assume the card has already been developed and they've started mining Bitcoin themselves. With current difficulty, they'll mine at least 12 Bitcoins per month - which at the current rate, is equal to $12600. So why would they dispatch it to you for $4680 right now?
What makes sense for them is:
1 --> Take pre-orders for a 600 GH/s card and take your money
2 --> Develop the card and start mining for themselves
3 --> Tell people the hardware is still under development
4 --> Mine as many Bitcoins as possible with state-of-the-are hardware, until there is a significant difficulty rise
5 --> When the difficulty reaches at the point when mining with 600 GH/s takes several months to break-even, start dispatching the device to customers
6 --> Start pre-orders on 1200 GH/s hardware!
