actually, I think the price $99 is quite fair. Compared to having all the tablets returned and don't know what to do with them, HP now created a super hot products with 2-digit price that everyone wants to grab one, or two, or twelve. Things wouldn't happen this way if the price was $200. True that HP didn't earn that much money back but as a big corporation, HP could afford that and earned something beyond money. Let's keep an eye on this matter to see what happens in the end.
My take is that they set the price so low as to clear inventory quickly. I'm sure the deals they had with retailers made a prolonged sell-off at incrementally decreasing prices undesirable.