North (formerly Thalmic Labs, now Google)

[greybird]

Rampant speculation follows.

It may be the case that owning the manufacturing process outright was the wrong choice. Perhaps after a few months of reality it was determined that there are better/cheaper/faster ways to build the products elsewhere, or they were able to use their own facility as a lever to get better deals with manufacturers elsewhere. The price drop may or may not be relevant here.

You're giving me flashbacks to BlackBerry moving its production to Mexico, which became one of the nails in the coffin...