By doing differentiating they try to give customer choice of device that is cost efficient to Nokia and also to customer. Believe it or not there is actually customers who will not want specific function or hardware and they like it that way (it would be packed with too much something..yes some people see it like that). Unfortunately these people are in minority. In my experience, sorry , it's over 40 old dads (Look Nokia's CEOs, but actually they are starting to get it finally) They did not completely see that right now customers demand everything to be on highest level on this kind of device. Read Ari Jaaksis blog about facebook/twitter people who only care about browser, IM/SMS, video (not spreadsheets and word processing). That´s actually his vision. Fact is that these same "hip" people got to also work And they want besides of all the other things all the E-series functionality. So would it make E-series less atractive? Probably. Would it eat e series market? Probably. It´s all about business, but this kind of business is not going to take you long anymore. And actually I see that Nokia is gradually starting to realize this.

I have to agree that right now these device is gradually IMHO going to its orginal price level. For me it would probably have started somewhere about 300 €.