finally it may come to cost of devices and with made in China miners will be hard to compete.
I think the success of BitMain chips is a serious threat to AM. Once they come to the mass production stage, I don't think AM can sell their cube any more without the new generation chips.
Sorry I'm not checking this thread as often as I should, what is "BitMain"

Another Chinese chips and mining hardware provider, which just finished 2 rounds of successful auctions. They provide 180G miner built with their own 55nm chips and the on wall power is around 2w/Ghs, much less than 7.5w/Ghs of AM gen-1 chips. Considering the Gen-3 chips of AM will not be ready before March 2014, I am afraid the market share of AM could shrink a lot during this period. Really wish friedcat and the board could share some their thoughts on this.
Bitmain chips as of now don't provide much competition imo. With asics that are not even more cost efficient than current asicminer gen1 tech I don't see why anyone would want bitmain asics. Maybe if they improve electric efficiency and can successfully employ mass production they might be a threat.
As of now I think knc provides the biggest threat to AM with 20nm chips on the way and there is a good chance they deliver unlike many other competitors.