At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business. A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check-out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole host of other activities not traditionally associated with computers. Tablets could be used by waiters in restaurants. By mechanics in auto body shops. By every nurse in a hospital. By pretty much any category of work that today needs a computer but where PCs are too expensive to be deployed. These are also devices built entirely for commercial reasons, no government backing, no academic sponsor, no proof-of-concept.
Where can you find a $45 tablet? what kind of solar calculators are you calling tablets :)
You are wrong. There are plenty devices that are way more powerful than calculators in this price range. Here is an example of an online shop, where you can find Android-based 7-inch tablets for as low as $50:
http://www.sunsky-online.com/l.....Tablet.htm
It’s not an iPad, but they are quite usable. I am, for example, a happy owner of Ainol Novo 7 Paladin. It’s a bit more expensive (about $100), but it’s quite powerful as well. It also runs Android 4. I use it to surf the web, when my wife is not using it as ebook reader, and my kid is not playing games on it.
And those are retail prices. If you buy bulk, like most of those malls do, you can get quite a discount as well.