I think also part of a long term strategy, in that AM in the past has demonstrated that they are conscious about not wanting to disrupt the network by owning a large share of it (say 40 or 50%). Franchising and cloud mining are avenues to manufacture chips and miners for more than their share of the network, and still seeing profits trickle back to AM from those.
Franchising would work this way, but cloud mining would not since the hashpower owners are not the ones controlling what transactions are included in a block. It's essentially like mining to a pool you can never switch away from.
Not that I think AM will ever come close to 40%