The prices of these ebook readers are finally dropping to match their value proposition. $200+ is way too much for a battery, a 3G radio, and an e-ink screen, especially considering that ebooks do not sell at any significant discount to their paper versions.
It's subsidizing the losses amazon is sustaining by selling e-books for cheap while keeping publishers happy.
Except Amazon is being forced to stop doing that by at least some publishers now, hence the "price chosen by the publisher" blurb on the kindle book pages now.