Hey you dont have the s9, cause if you had the top contender then you would still get something back from using it. What determines if is profitable or not correlated to price is the top miner. If your statement was true then we could say the amd 280x would still be making money, see my point your a9 is pretty much in an identical situation as hd 280x owners. As soon this miner hits e3 will not be profitable anymore cause it will not be the top released eth asic.
Anyway, bitmain like i said many times, bitmain release the e3 just to cover up the f3, e3 180mhs for the peasants and the good gddr5 1500 mhs f3 for them. Think bitmain would give you the top miner? hehe
True, obviously when a new piece of hardware releases the diff spikes. But I don't recall it ever causing much of a price difference. As far as I can tell all it does is cut out weak players from getting their slice of the pie. If anything newer efficient hardware would more likely drop the price as it increases the diff because these new miners can afford to sell it for less and still take a profit.