This is a very good point. And I agree with you on all points of reasoning.

I think that this particular industry segment is young and this is classical economics at play. As competition ramps up -- not only between device manufacturers, but also carriers -- prices will inevitably fall. I think both Apple and Samsung have priced their devices at a profit maximizing point based on speculated demand and (lack) of competition and the rate of production (and many other metrics that I/we are not aware of). These prices are not commodity and I assure you that they are inflated above the costs of the hardware. But as these variables change, so will the prices if these companies wish to remain competitive; which I would bet the farm, they will remain.

I think it's a bit too early to speculate on pricing decisions, though your three options are well categorized, and I suspect that b) is also likely. But time will tell what this looks like, and that's based on quite a lot of unforeseeable factors (from my vantage anyway).

But I don't think that lowering the price puts Samsung in a tough position. It's *really* easy to lower prices. What's difficult is raising them without turning people off.

In all likelihood, you're right, the Tab isn't a viable smartphone replacement, and me comparing the price/specs in this regard is somewhat pointless, though useful to me and perhaps a few others.

I *do* however speculate that portable 3G tablets will have many thinking very differently about high-powered smartphones. While I don't think that smartphones are going away, I see having 'good-enough' smartphones -- inexpensive handsets with basic features -- becoming much more popular. I can see users reverting to $200 handsets that they can tweet from, take photos, take calls, etc, but use their portable Tablets for serious interaction. I speculate that a sizable portion of the market may fall into this model.

Interestingly, I can see Nokia profiting heavily from this switch, as well as Android devices as they are poised to capitalize on low cost, low performance devices.

In this case, a slightly more expensive tablet may not be balked at.

There's also the increase in carrier competition, that already has interesting effects on the ways that plans are structured. With multiple devices on the horizon, I see carriers adopting shared plans (multiple sims, one account) to consolidate usage. This will also make 3G tablets more attractive.

But this is all speculation.