I think the retail people like you and us make up less than 5% of the total hashrate. Those higher up in the foodchain probably get equipment more than 50% cheaper than us so they can continue to mine for awhile and the rate still goes up because there is competition between the suppliers who can make more and faster, wafers, chips, boards, kits, etc. As the margins get squeezed for even the manufacturers, those that are the slowest to develop newer and faster and cost efficient equipment will falter.............. BFL, Black Arrow and KNC soon.
Yeah the people who in the past would order 20 SC Singles from BFL in 2012 are now contacting the ASIC companies directly and asking for their units to be shipped straight to data centers with lower overhead. No worries about heat, noise, uptime (short of the unit failing).
That is too expensive. Now that BTC income from mining is 10X-15X the cost of electricity, it can be paid. But eventually running your own hardware in datacenters will be too expensive. At first I ordered more Neptunes that I could run at home, and started contacting datacenters to rent a rack and put those there. Datacenters costs (i put in my first post the cheapest option that I almost took) are no less than 4X the cost of household electricity. Now I canceled the orders that I cannot ran at home (however I am eagerly waiting the 3 Neptunes I can run at home), and I am waiting for the second half 2014, when KNC starts selling hashing power in their mega datacenter. That still will be more expensive that running those at home, but the advantage of no worries (heat,noise,...), plus not being able to run more at home, justifies the price.