I must have been really tired when I wrote that last night.
Of course, Staples might have several reasons for offering the tablets at bargain prices. Right now, they seem to be doing a store-wide clearance. You can get excellent deals on lots of products. On the other hand, the Acer Iconia debuted just a few months ago at $450-$500. Now, you can get it from multiple places for about
$350. That's a pretty quick price drop. Plus, many other tablets have steeply fallen in price, such as the Dell Streak. Given the market is inundated with Android tablet options, what is likely happening is that certain products (like the Galaxy Tab 10.1) are eating up the competition. We'll just have to wait to see how much these new devices have sold before we reach any conclusions. In my opinion, we have some reason to believe that the tablet market might be different than the cellphone one. Tablets seem more like niche products than common household items.
Right now, a situation is emerging where Apple is being perceived as the high-end product, while Google phones are the cheaper but less classy alternative. If that's the case, Apple will continue to make gobs of money from people interested in defining themselves in certain way and don't care whether Android is technically a better operating system. If I were Apple, I'd be pretty happy with this position. Right now, they are raking in record profits, and their growth has been steady despite Android's rising dominance in the smartphone market.
Just think: Google would probably kill to have a similar customer base. People who will only buy Apple computers, will only buy Apple smartphones, will only buy Apple tablets, will only buy Apple MP3 players . . .