The power savings on these will help but it wont be worth the 8k+ premium. Inno should be ashamed.
I think we have to keep things in perspective. Other companies brought X11 miners to market first when there was little market and little profitability. The entire crypto market took off and Dash/X11 got a nice run up. Those companies that had made the X11 miners who were looking a little weak and somewhat foolish suddenly became rock stars. Everyone clamored for X11 miners so the manufacturers responded as fast as they could.
What I don't think the manufacturers expected was Bitmain to come after this market the way they have. iBelink set the bar by announcing early pricing for preorders and only in large volumes. Baikal was completely silent when they have been the rock stars since the beginning of the year and sadly they didn't have a monster miner in the works while iBelink was bringing a big boy.
iBelink announcing a price gave Bitmain a way to price the market and squash the competition like a bug. Inno once again seems to have the worst timing. Just like the A4, not long after they launched that miner Bitmain launches a competitive miner that hashed better, used half the power, and was priced under the Inno A4. So Inno was left holding the bag. They took a beating on the A4.
Again Bitmain uses their monster monopoly position and the info from the competition to beat them over the head. There is little room for these companies to recoup their engineering investment when Bitmain out of the gate prices these miners at this level.
The people at iBelink will probably be OK, they did the preorder early enough to get people buying miners at premium prices and likely sold enough to dig themselves out of the hole for the money they invested to launch this. However I am very concerned for Inno. They didn't announce this miner soon enough. They didn't get the orders they would need to recoup their costs. This has to be a terrible blow to Inno and I don't know if they will survive this as far as continued investment and support for the mining community. I just don't know if they can absorb that kind of financial loss.
The A5 on paper might be more efficient, but there is no way to justify that cost when Bitmain is out trying to squash everyone competing with them like a bug. Realistically Inno can't compete at that price point, there is no way. Nobody is going to compete at that price point that Bitmain has set. If Inno could get that A5 price point down into the $4-5k price range now that prices are dropping and diff is already skyrocketing Inno might be able to move some miners at this reduced price. But I wouldn't hold my breath that they will do it.
I think they would probably take a loss on every unit moved if they dropped the price that much. So who knows if they will even offer A5's beyond this pre-order batch. I would think they have probably put in at least one decent sized order so there would be miners to sell to the general market as a batch 1, but once those are gone I have my doubts there will be anymore.
So before we throw Inno under a bus about being ashamed I would try to put it in context. And frankly I am very concerned for the miner market and our community after this because we may see most of the manufacturers take a beating and not come back with more miners in the future. If anything I feel bad for anyone trying to offer a miner that has to face Bitmain.
What is happening right now may be the kill shot for anyone competing with Bitmain. I hope I am wrong.