I see Amazon and B&N taking a big chunk out of the low-cost tablet market, and it will be hard for anyone else to compete. They can sell direct to consumers an

I see Amazon and B&N taking a big chunk out of the low-cost tablet market, and it will be hard for anyone else to compete. They can sell direct to consumers and capture more revenue. They have a vested interest in locking customers into their ecosystem, so they can sell at cost. Finally, they are trusted brands and can use their online stores to promote product. A company like HP and Samsung would make most of their profits on the sale of the device. $200 tablets will never be profitable on their own, so unless you have another revenue stream, it's not worth doing. That leaves cheap clone systems probably running Android with crappy build quality and nonexistent engineering. You can be sure that Amazon noticed the frenzy over $99 Touchpads and the strong sales of the Nook color.