I was speaking hypothetically in the realm of "if BFL was able to ship right now in volume"
This would rely on the assumption of two things: that they could fill their existing orders of $125/$275 quickly, and that every new order placed could be priced at roughly 14-15x the current price - and people would pay it (following that people paid that much per mh/s on the USB miners)
It's very simple to logically believe that IF BFL could ship right now, they would, because they would have a monopoly on ASIC sales given their hash rates... and they could charge a LOT more for each unit.
The money they could make in BTC a day would be nothing compared to the $ they could be bringing in and then just converting to BTC
Sure, assuming they could price their product 15x and ship in bulk right now, then they would be better off shipping product. However, I don't believe they can do either.
The ASICMiner product is not really competitive. Even so, it and the Avalon chip sails have already sucked up a lot of capital that would have otherwise gone to BFL. Also, both products are being sold at inflated prices. If BFL actually enters the market, Avalon and ASICMiner could revise their prices down to compete.