With iPad 3 Coming, New Tablet Price Wars Pending? Barnes & Noble bows cheaper Nook, BlackBerry upgrades PlayBook tablet OS, pre-iPad 3 released

It now looks as if Apple will announce its next-generation iPad tablet PC – the iPad 3 – on March 7 (although Apple hasn't yet officially set the date), with availability likely the week after. Other than the much-speculated upgrades ("iPad 3 To Go On Sale In Early March?"), possibly the biggest boon to consumers looking to buy their first tablet will be the likely iPad 2 price drop, at least for a limited time (i.e. as long as supplies last). When Apple started selling the iPhone 4S, for instance, it dropped the price of the still-impressive 8 GB iPhone 4 from $199 to $99. I don't think Apple will slice the price of the iPad 2 in half, from $499 to $249 for the 8 GB model. But even at, say, $300, iPad 2 beats all other cutting-edge Android tablets and could trigger a price war – good news for nouveau tablet buyers. Barnes & Noble and RIM, the makers of the BlackBerry PlayBook – are being a bit more proactive prior to iPad 3's pending profusion. Barnes & Noble has just announced an 8 GB Nook priced at $199, which, to be honest, is more a reaction to the 8 GB/$199 Kindle Fire e-reader/tablet than to iPad 3. Kindle Fire has outsold every other tablet other than iPad, and especially the over-priced $249 Barnes & Noble Nook. Since you can add memory to the Nook (and you can't to the Kindle Fire), and since you can buy a 32 GB memory card for $30 or less to boost the Nook's memory capacity, spending $50 for just 8 GB more memory for the $249 16 GB Nook makes no fiscal sense. In addition, Barnes & Noble has further slashed the price on the original Nook Color from $199 to $169.