I agree with this take on the reason MS didn't announce pricing on the tablet.... (Google Nexus Tablet with high spec @$199)

Robert ScobleYesterday 8:35 PM - Public
Now we know why Microsoft rushed its tablet announcement last week

This is why Microsoft didn't announce a price for its Surface tablet last week. Imagine if they had announced a $399 price. This week that will look incredibly lame. It is very clear that Microsoft has to get under the $200 price point with its tablets. I've been saying that the ballsy thing for Ballmer to do would be to price it at $99. People have been telling me I'm nuts, but that's really what it's going to take to get Windows RT taken seriously by anyone.

Microsoft's shareholders aren't gonna like that at all. Remember how it cost Microsoft about $10 billion to build the Xbox brand? I do. Microsoft is going to have to spend $20 to $30 billion to marketshare here. That means a $99 tablet. If Microsoft tries to price against iPad it'll fail and fail horribly.

Bloomberg is reporting that Google is in fact planning to show off a $199, Nexus-branded Asus tablet at its I/O developer conference this week. The 7-inch tablet has been rumored for months, and will reportedly be the first device to show off Google’s new Jelly Bean operating system. Two days ago Gizmodo Australia posted images and specs it claims to have gleaned from a training manual, claiming the device will have a 1280 x 800 display, a 1.3GHz Tegra 3 processor with its 12-core GeForce GPU, and 1GB of RAM. While the news is definitely interesting, it's not official until Google gives the word, so be sure to check back tomorrow for up-to-the-second liveblog coverage of I/O.