I think the idea behind pricing at ~$300 instead of $200 (as with N7 or Kindle Fire) was to separate themselves from what they want people to believe are cheap knock-offs.
I completely agree with this. This was also evident with the iPhone 5 release. When the competition (think Samsung Galaxy S3) was selling for a few dollars more, Apple didn't hesitate to bump their price to match. And, obviously, this has always been the case with every other product they've sold in the last 20 years.
