I'm not a hardware expert, but I don't think so. There are two ways to think about this:
a- What would it cost to build a more or less exact hardware replica?
b- What would it cost to build a decent substitute?
I don't even think they were competing on price in the 'a' sense.
But either way, 'b,' is, I think, the important one and Apple certainly weren't competing on price in that sense pre-iphone. You could always get a decent mp3 player or laptop roughly as good as but different to an Apple for a big discount. Still can. If you want to run Windows or Linux, you can do it without hassle on 1/2 - 3/4 of the budget. If you want a music player for jogging, an ipod nano knockoff will do the trick just fine.
If you want an android tablet or phone, you seem to need to pay more for (arguably) less.
You can get Tegra2 tablets running Android for half the price of the cheapest iPad for roughly the same techie mucking around effort as putting Linux on a netbook right now.
I personally wouldn't buy one till it was confirmed you'd be able to get Honeycomb on it, but they've been out there for a few months now, mostly held back by Google's lack of approval for shipping with the Android Market unless you're selling a phone. I believe that policy's about to change though.
a- What would it cost to build a more or less exact hardware replica?
b- What would it cost to build a decent substitute?
I don't even think they were competing on price in the 'a' sense.
But either way, 'b,' is, I think, the important one and Apple certainly weren't competing on price in that sense pre-iphone. You could always get a decent mp3 player or laptop roughly as good as but different to an Apple for a big discount. Still can. If you want to run Windows or Linux, you can do it without hassle on 1/2 - 3/4 of the budget. If you want a music player for jogging, an ipod nano knockoff will do the trick just fine.
If you want an android tablet or phone, you seem to need to pay more for (arguably) less.