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.
Don’t knock buying market share. That you’re comparing the Amazon situation to Dell and HP tells me that you don’t. It’s much more analogous to compare Amazon to Sony or Microsoft in this endeavor.
Amazon is not in the hardware business but is in the content delivery business. Microsoft and Sony have the exact same business model when it comes to the Playstation and Xbox lines. No profit on the units, but they’re laughing all the way to the bank.