for a 7” tablet / pad, the goal price should be $50.
it is all a matter of mass production.
remember the early calculators?
remember the early digital watches?
we need a texas instraments determination to shrink the price.
The BOM on the calculator supported the price structure you are talking about.
However, the cost of LCD display, touch-screen front, the multi-core chipsets involved, 1 Gig of RAM, SDRAM, as well as the wi-fi/Bluetooth/GPS/solid state gyro-scopes and accelerometers are well beyond that price point. As-is, Amazon is predicted to be selling each kFire at a $50 loss.
Apple could conceively drop them $200 and still make a $100 profit on the iPads; but why would they? They are selling far, far more than any ‘expert’ predicted.
Remember just over a year ago they were predicted to be a total and complete flop? I think that Amazon needs to re-think their strategy, because it’s never a good idea to buy marketshare. Ask HP/Dell how buying marketshare has worked for them.
It should be free if they gear it toward all paid content (or advertising subsidised content).
The goal, yes, but the reality is such that today an iPad, for example, costs Apple almost $300 to manufacture, so what are you going to do? (There have been pretty detailed breakdowns of the costs published in the press.)