But this hardware you claim AM will sell in the future, who will be buying it?
what makes the new gen any different from current gen? there's even more competition for new gen, so you better believe that AM will sell that upfront, rather than mining from it.
It's not about current gen vs new gen, it's about profitability and risk. And it doesn't matter what gen you have, higher profitability is through selling hardware. You get the money up front, rather than waiting for it to pay off.
If they don't make new gen chips there will definately be no more hardware sales, and if they do make next gen chips you can guarantee they will be solo-mining until it is no longer profitable and then they will begin hardware sales. This is exactly how it was done in the past and how it will most likely be done in the future unless specifically stated otherwise.
no, it wasn't done like that at all.
hardware sales started early on, and mining was still very profitable, that's what gave AM such an advantage. They had to sell hardware to be able to expand the mining operation. They didn't wait for hardware to become unprofitable to start selling it.
They started selling hardware when they realized people would pay more than what AM could make mining with it in a reasonable amount of time. It wasn't that mining was unprofitable (they are still making a profit on the farm, even today), it's that it is MORE profitable to get the cash upfront.
You are literally saying the exact opposite of what actually happened... AM made a massive profit back in the days when they were the first and only people with working asics. at one point they had around 20% of the network hashrate. So you think that AM can make more money from selling hardware than mining? If they had and held 20% they would be making 1/5th of 7200 so 1440 btc per day. Lets assume AM is making cubes for dirt cheap and somehow has profits of up to 50% per cube (which is unlikely) then he would need to sell 1440 cubes per day or 50th/s per day.
FC started selling hardware the second BFL began shipping because the asic monopoly was broken.