I am actually excited. 1 A9 will free up my 70 1080 Tis so they can mine Lyra2 on NH and 4 batch 1 Z9s will free up my 1070 army for mining something more profitable. These Nvidias were bought last year and they have paid themselves off several times already.
Kinda weird but I also purchased 4 batch 1 z9's and 1 A9 ZMaster. Great minds must think alike (I hope)? I'm feeling more confident about my A9 purchase and less so about the batch 1 z9's. Bitmain got caught completely flatfooted by the A9 announcement. I think their strategy with only shipping 77 units was so they could get those early customers to hype it up via forums/youtube/blogs so more people buy into batch #2 thinking they're going to be earning as much as the first 77 customers.
Their strategy completely backfired. I think they're rethinking things right now, after all the complaints, and A9 announcement. It also doesn't help when a lot of those first 77 units got into coin devs hands. I doubt they will give more coupons or double miners for batch #1 customers. I'm guessing firmware update or faster shipping schedule is their only viable option.
You're probably forgetting about the price difference. Not many people are willing to shell out $10k for a single A9 that could be rendered useless instantly if devs decide to fork. Many people will still pick the Z9 because at $1.8k it is a more acceptable risk. It is not as efficient than the A9 but it is still better than buying a GPU rig. It seems like it's for more casual miners.
Besides, buying any of these outside of batch 1 is already a bad idea. Innosilicon is probably selling it now because they've mined enough to know profitability will soon tank.