If you have got one or not, $99 for a tablet like the touchpad is a very cool deal. It obviously drove a lot of traffic to retailers online and off, to deplete all inventory in a matter of hours. There’s no question HP will lose money at the price point (as it costs them $300- and some change to manufacture the product), but there is a huge takeaway others in the tablet business can have from this situation.

Someone should create (preferably Google), a tablet priced at $99-$149, with the quality hardware a tablet should have, and an OS that people want (Android) other than iOS. So you are probably curious at this point how Google could achieve profitability at this price point. The goal wouldn’t be to make money off the hardware (it’s a sour and dying business anyways), it’s all in the software. Sell apps, sell more apps, and put ads on the device. Since Google is already in the ad business, the inventory and management of serving these ads wouldn’t be a problem. Put them in the browser and it will offset the loss of selling the tablets. They’ll create more impressions on these ads since tablet users are going to be using their tablets for longer duration of time than on their computer doing a search on Google. To make the deal even better for consumers, the ads should be disabled after an X number of impressions where Google recovers the amount of money they lose on the hardware.

Everyone knows Apple’s iPad is the number one selling tablet overall, but if another player wants to overtake them, they are going to have a very slim chance of dethroning Apple at the same price point of $499- no matter how killer the specs are- because they won’t have the app store. And since Google’s Android market is the most practical player, it’s only logical that they get in the tablet business first hand, like they’ve done with the Nexus line of phones.

Amazon did it with Kindle, placing ads on a cheaper version, but can you imagine how awesome it would be for a non-iPad tablet to achieve as much- or more market share than what the iPad has right now? Not to mention it would stimulate the ecosystem of apps for Android. Some of the best apps available on iOS are not available on Android, until months after the iOS launch, or ever. Why? Because the opportunity isn’t as huge. A product with a sweet price running the OS people can learn to love can disrupt how people buy tablets.

So what are your thoughts on tablets and the price point of non-iPad tablets?