On June 21, Barnes & Noble made an aggressive pricing move, announcing a new version of their hot-selling Nook. This was a stripped down version of the Nook as we know it, without the 3G connectivity that lets users download books from anywhere in the continental United States. At just $149 though, users should be quite happy to do with just Wi-Fi. Even better, they lowered the price of their 3G-capable Nook to just $199, lowering the prices across the board.

Naturally, Amazon couldn’t just stand by and let Barnes & Noble get the better of them. They wasted no time and that very same day announced that the price for the Amazon Kindle 2 had been lowered to $189. It was an interesting strategy, undercutting the Nook model most similar to the Kindle 2 by $10, while not offering their own 3G-neutered Kindle for the particularly budget-conscious. The price of the infrequently mentioned Kindle DX remains at $489.00.

Let’s be realistic here though, neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble are getting into the business of undercutting each other just for fun. The overnight success of Apple’s iPad, which sold three million units in its first 80 days of sales and is projected to sell as many as 29 million by 2012, has created downward pressure on the pricing structure of standalone eReaders.

According to the consumer electronics analysts, mainstream consumers were having a hard time justifying the cost of a straight-forward eReader when there was a relatively cheap and much sexier alternative on the market that could draw not just from one content provider, but all of them at once. Operating margins for both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are about to get much thinner, as both companies race to the bottom in price. They can afford to sell their hardware as a loss leader, much like game consoles do, as long as they’re able to make back the money on their cut of all books sold through their bookstore.

With iBooks having firmly established itself in the retail space and Borders jumping into the fray with their own Kobo readers and book offerings, the market is about to get a lot more competitive and thus, consumer-friendly. Those on platform-agnostic hardware like the iPad should be mindful of where they purchase content – it could very well tip the scales one way or the other!