Yup its shipping cost - 490k = it's only 2 maximum orders = so two companies with secret asic project - and multiple smaller ones, like my 10k chip order.  But if you look at the timeline I calculated for assembling miners from chips: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=180093.0

August is about right for seeing these hashers coming online.

Cost is about $2 million for chips - figure double that for facilities and supplies, including all the PCB, FPGA, PSU, cables.. the list goes on and on, plus more for labor.  Two companies made that investment without informing the community or allowing them any opportunity to participate in it because the ROI is so obvious.

How many chips per avalon device from batch 1-3? Here, I'll help: 3 modules each, each module has 10 pcb with 8 chips each = 240 chips per avalon.
batch 1 300, batch 2 600, batch 3 600 = 1500 devices = 360k chips