The sales during the christmas period were not nightmare numbers and now the holiday is over the numbers have obvious dropped, but they are double what the system was selling pre-november. In the west its sold on par with the Wii U this week, and is doing much fairer in Japan... In short things are not looking as bad as the OP is making it out to sound. Now what has to be done to raise the standard from 80/90k each week to around 200k is simple; Games+ Price.
The Vita still does not have killer apps, the 2 titles most people were pegging on were COD and Assasins creed but both received poor reviews. When was the last time we expected games with metacritics of 30 and 60 to save a system? In Japan It has a number of killer apps on the way in the form of Soul Sacrifice, One Piece and Gundam. Before these arrive there are a ton of smaller yet significant titles arriving in feb to provide small sale jumps, leading up to the sales explosion that is likely to occur in march. I predict we will see sales of 100k plus for at least one week. A price cut is not necessary in japan.
In the west things aren't looking as bright. All of the big Vita games coming out in Q1 are japanese centric, the complete opposite of what we saw during christmas. This means that there are arguably no big Vita games arriving in the west until april, although soul sacrifice could still launch in march over here, its looking unlikely. As such we must expect the hardware sales in the west for Q1 are going to be low. I'm assuming summer will alot brighter, with some big 1st party titles like soul sacrifice, Tearaway and Kill Zone likely to arrive in Q2.I think we might get release dates from the sony event in febuary, as well as the a glimpse at the Vita's fall line up, one title has already been confirmed.
Sony must invest in 3rd parties to make Vita releases more frequent and look for the right opportunities... Like a FFType 0 port which be done in no time, cost very little and sell a ton of Vita. Finally the psp is dead in NA but it still sold 100k this. Thats another part of the vita problem in japan, people are still buying Vitas and devs are supporting instead of Vita.