Ultimately, however, the biggest issue with high pricing is that it creates a high-end niche for tablets. It's as if manufacturers have decided the best way forward is exclusivity: Sell fewer tablets yet make higher profits on each one sold. Taking an overview, this does the tablet computing platform no good at all.

, of course. But it's a marketplace full of devices terrible to use due to . They fail to show why tablet computing is so compelling.

Manufacturers can justify why tablets are so expensive. Large capacitive-sensor touchscreens are not cheap. Nor at the (relatively) high-powered processors tablet computers demand, or high quantities of computing-grade flash storage.

However, it feels as if manufacturers are not only using the Apple iPad as a model for form factor and design, but also as a price guide. If Apple can do it, they seem to think, then so can we.

They clearly choose to ignore that overpriced electronics are Apple's raison d'être. Apple gets away with it, but that's taken 30 years of training customers to appreciate its brand. Companies better known for manufacturing cell phones or televisions are never going to muster this kind of head-turning power.