Avalon is selling for so much more because they CAN. They have a product in hand that nobody else can really compete with at this point. Why would they sell it any cheaper? If/When BFL gets their asses in gear and starts shipping a product, Avalon will have to bring their prices down to whatever the market forces are driving.
And if they really wanted to maximize their profits, they would artificially delay shipment of round two and three, while collecting more
BTC780 10k chip bundle orders.
That way, they keep people from getting scared away from ordering the chip bundles by a skyrocketing network difficulty.
Not that I necessarily believe that's what they are doing. But that would certainly increase their profits...
Lets hope they use some of those funds for Gen 2. As well as a node shrink or two.
I don't mind Avalons strategy too much. They have encouraged people to take their designs and create new markets in distant regions. Eventually we (the customer) won't have to depend directly on Avalon to get our ASIC products. We will eventually depend on their affiliates taking the chips and creating their own designs and platforms.
Right now the Avalons from the Avalon team are becoming more like reference designs. They are doing the opposite of what BFL is doing. BFL is proprietary and secret. No one will ever buy their chips or make a design of their own. There won't ever be any real competition from BFL or a market that isn't just BFL itself.
What Avalon is effectively doing is encouraging startups and entrepreneurs who can and eventually will create their own designs and improve upon it. You will have alot more options a little later on. You won't always have to depend on the Avalon Team to ship out your products. They will only mass manufacture the chips and send them to the other companies who will then integrate them into their own products and create more variety and complexity.
---------------------
For example,
It is a multi-million dollar profit market for the first guy who designs an FPGA + ASIC miner who can not only do BitCoins but also various ALT coins. The Avalon Team can continue to improve their BitCoin ASICs while other who are willing to go further can integrate designs that include ALT Coin mining.