Personally, I'm kinda glad chips haven't been shipped yet due to the increase in difficulty. Sucks that people have put money into preorders but that was your decision. Yifu is a clever bastard but it really should have been expected.
There, I said it.
There is no real way to know with 100% certainty that they arent just mining with all those chips for themselves.
Yup sucks to be a preordering customer of AVALON chips.
Yes there is. No one can account for 100% of the 20%+ rises for the past 7-8 difficulty increases. Yeah there's some this, and some that; but the continued increase only means that someone is consistently adding hashpower to the network. If you don't think it's the ASIC manufacturers you are blind.
And honesty I don't really care as long as they can meet their PAID customer's orders. ASICminer is the only one with integrity so far to do so.