It's a marketing gimmick, but it also represents a step in the direction of commoditizing bitcoin mining. Right now you've basically got a few players in the game: KnC, BitFury, Bitmain. These are the folks who are producing chips in massive numbers and their sole market is the dedicated mining business where they fill datacenters with gear. Yes, Bitmain sells to the public still, but that segment of the market continues to shrink. Not too many folks are throwing dedicated mining hardware in their homes any more.
So what can you do to try and capture more market share? You throw your chips into items everyday consumers purchase: routers, coffee makers, toasters, refrigerators, cable boxes, gaming systems, etc. Now you're potentially making deals with big brand names like Samsung, LG, GE, Whirlpool, etc.
Bitmain's controller boards in their miners already run OpenWRT, so it's not too much of a stretch to produce their own router hardware.
So what can you do to try and capture more market share? You throw your chips into items everyday consumers purchase: routers, coffee makers, toasters, refrigerators, cable boxes, gaming systems, etc. Now you're potentially making deals with big brand names like Samsung, LG, GE, Whirlpool, etc.
Bitmain's controller boards in their miners already run OpenWRT, so it's not too much of a stretch to produce their own router hardware.
bitmain also promises additional functions, which would most likely be either a wallet or hashnest/pacmic integration or both.
maybe a trezor-like function plus router plus a bit of mining plus an exchange hookup thrown in, so you see some coin accumulation in your wallet.
This would cerainly attract some people, then allow him/her to purchase more essentially effortlessly.
