They probably got complacent due to there own successes:
They were just sitting back and watching the ridiculous amount of coins roll in when they should have been expediting 28nm development. now they're loosing the race
I mean they were selling the first blade for so much. it'd be hard not to get blinded by the fortune.
I think ASICMINER is thinking very far ahead, possibly too far ahead for most shareholders, with things like immersion cooling. Bitcoins, and bitcoin mining, are going to be around for the next decade at least.
Yeah but now we can still make plenty of block reward coins, and the transition towards fees is still rather unknown in terms of profitability.