I think they are only selling big order to large private farms right now they have the technology edge for the moment and they are exploiting it
Their chips are having huge yield issues, I doubt they have sold any apart from the couple they made from their sample chips. The whole "batch 1 sold out" is a marketing gimmick.
Yeah hopefully they will fix their chips and mass produce them with a low failure rate and start pumping out miners and have the price drop.
Not a matter of "fixing their chips".
The 16/14nm chip process node itself is the problem for EVERYONE going to those sizes regardless of what the chips are used for. Intel, nVidia, Samsung et al ALL have the same poor yield issues because the manufacturing process is still far from stable.
This simple fact is why Bitmain took the safer route to just optimize their 28nm chips vs rolling the dice on the smaller nodes. Give another year or so and yields for 16/14nm *should* get better. Of course researchers/devs at the chip foundries have been saying that for a couple years now...
I would expect bitmain is looking at R/D on lower nm chips. They have lots of money and people. They choose to release another 28nm which was the most profitable for them at the moment. They likely will do it until a competitor forces them to move to a lower NM.
But I think they have the best of both worlds. Sell 28nm and work on r/d on lower nm for later on.... win win for them.