Why do you say hardware sales is a short-term opportunity?
I would say it's the other way around. Income from mining will not go much above what it is currently, because of the 51% issue. Income from selling mining hardware is still far from saturated. People are bidding up USB miners to +$400
on eBay! The demand is
huge and I think it would be a lot more profitable for shareholders if ASICMiner were to focus more on hardware sales now when there is such a large demand to satisfy.
The simple explanation is that AM is far behind in technology with their current models. 130nm is comparable to a Pentium III and when the competitors are researching i7 chips, it's only a matter of time before you can't give away the blades that AM currently produces.
To catch up, AM needs to design a new chip and we have no information about the current status of that, whether it's already financed, or what timeframe we're looking at.
We know one thing and that is that friedcat recently announced that they have decided to go with 65nm on the second generation chip. That tells at least me that they have some ways to go, and Bitbury for one is just days away from having a working 65nm chip. At that point, Bitfury will be filling that urgent need for ASICs and AM will have to play catchup either by lowering prices or skipping a generationand going straight for something like 28nm to remain competitive.
So yes, AM should sell everything including the kitchen sink while they still can. Two months from now, Bitfury may be pumping 65nm ASICs into the market (they contractually delivers in October but states it will be delivered in August). At that point, those existing blades will be worth less than their packaging material because anyone can jump across the street at get far superior performance at a tentatively much lower price (120GH/s for just north of $2K anyone?).
.b