What makes you think Intel can't let them go for less if they need to? They charge what they do because they can, not necessarily because they need to. Sure maybe budget tablets are probably a no go but if Intel clean up in other segments then I'm pretty sure everybody else is going to feel the pinch if they're confined to dirt cheap models. Tablets could be a way to subsidize more lucrative markets, the same way a company like Nvidia fund their HPC aspirations with lower margin mainstream GPUs. The only question Intel need to ask themselves is whether or not it's worth using their limited 14nm fab capacity for. The problem isn't whether they'll make money or not, it's whether they'll make enough to justify it
If Intel lower their prices it affects their base strategy, they need to reduce R&D and other investments. Intel is a huge company and needs high margin to stay in the lead.
Please understand that people buy tablets with 20$ SOC instead of budget laptop with 70$ SOC/CPU, this transition won't kill Intel but it will give them less money and that is of course a problem for them.