ASICminer (disclosure: I own shares in ASICminer) is shipping smaller miners, powered only by USB. Their larger miners aren't shipping yet in large numbers either.
I agree, at some point this'll be a race to the bottom.
I agree, at some point this'll be a race to the bottom.
So what's the projected ROI on your units? Which of the units are shipping?
(Caveat that you've got a vested stake understood.)
Their USB powered devices are really just-for-fun, and their larger modular blade systems will make a return on your investment of a few dollars- maybe. The company also keeps rapidly dropping the prices on their products faster than they can actually mine Bitcoin.
335MH/s with a draw of 2.5W at the current difficulty of 86,933,018 nets a gross earning of 0.0019BTC per day. Assuming a low power cost of 0.10c / kWH, you'd lose 0.01 USD to your bill, giving a net profit of 0.24 USD per day. Even at the current selling price of 0.10BTC, you're never, ever going to make a return.
Disclosure: paid my rent by buying and reselling the USB devices.
Manufacturer wise they come in all shades of dodgy. BFL have such a long order book (year and a half at this point) that the devices they are delivering cost hundreds of thousands in BTC initially, and will never make even their own cost back. Avalon was initially making very profitable products, but suddenly stopped because well, their competition supposedly threatened them. ASICminer sells products that will never earn their cost back. KNCminer is unproven outside of a single FPGA prototype. Bitfury makes nice products and ships them on time, but they're hard to come by outside of Europe. All the others are either blatant scams or appear to be.
It's an extremely touchy game to get involved with. I've read enough that I would never take the risk with any of these companies; people get screwed over time and time again. There's people who decided to take out college loans and buy miners with, which just sort of demonstrates the mindset you need if you want to "invest" here.
Disclosure: I own one ASICminer device that I kept around to keep my Raspberry Pi busy.