I thought this was a thread about a competitor to the iPad, no?
Does nobody subscribe to capitalist market theory anymore these days? sigh
There will soon be many competitors to the iPad. These competitors, unable to compete solely on features or polish (read: quality), will most likely compete on price -- i.e. Hyundai vs. Honda. Competition of this nature can drive down prices on the entire market. It's clear that Apple makes considerable profit on each iPad ( https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/04/how_much_does_it_cos... ) so they have quite a bit of room to maneuver on price in order to put pressure on the market -- i.e. if they make it harder to compete on price, then competitors will have to compete on other differentiable areas, like features or marketing, and very few competitors will be able to do so. A $100 price drop, while eating into profit, is still a profitable price for the device.
Finally, prior to launch, Apple indicated that it could be "nimble" about iPad pricing should if flounder in the market or come under heavy competition ( http://www.techdigest.tv/2010/02/apple_to_lower.html ). See the point above about profitability. The market is extremely open right now and it's Apple's to own and dominate. 2 Million iPads, while a lot, is only a fraction of the potential market. Apple needs to absolutely dominate the market now, and make it that much harder for competitors to move in. They'll either have to iterate with the next version of the device soon, and include obvious features people want, like USB, SD Card slots and a Camera. Or they'll have to cut prices. Considering that the original device pointedly omitted such obvious I/O capabilities, it appears the philosophy will not be to release a new version with those minor modifications. So price seems to be the other logical conclusion.
Common, it's not that hard. Sometimes I swear I feel like I'm speaking moon language.
