since this is the lowest sales have been since the price cut, maybe its time for a price cut?

2DS-$99, 3DS-$129, 3DS XL-$149

Omg 3ds sales on par with one of the best selling consoles psp!!!! And people say its a bad thin well done 3ds to sell so well despite the smartphone tablet competetion

One positive thing about it, dat Vita consistency lol

Probably, but I think Nintendo is extremely reluctant to cut the price because they need the fatter profit margins with the 3DS to reach company profit targets most likely. It would boost sales, but it would lose them money in the process. 

The big Apple is here and it's here to stay.

Is the N3DS just an upgrade in specs + a redesign or a completely new handheld?

Redesign, just think of it as the 3DSi + 3DSi XL. That's exactly what it is. 

Being that cheap would probably mean less powerful.
A real, good tablet is what Nintendo would need. Not too much, of course.

No, the tablet would not have console games, at least, not recent ones. Only port Wii games to the tablet.
That way, the old games would not compete with the handheld and home console business.
In a sense it would be like how Nintendo always kept the handheld and home console separate in terms of power. That way they wouldn`t compete with each other and software wouldn`t be costly to produce (with assests already used in the past).

Also, by making it powerful enough, the tablet can be used to serve as a controller or even stream games from the home console (like the gamepad does) and with that you could get a cheaper home console SKU (which would also work with the handheld as a controller).

That way Nintendo can keep 3 hardware devices and not make them compete with each other - by default, that is.

I don`t think your idea of just a portable with a TV attachment is what Nintendo has in mind. They already said they aren`t going with one piece of hardware for next generation.

It depends I guess Nintendo could get a GPU like the PowerVR 6430 (this is the same chip in the iPad mini retina) for dirt cheap. Throw the 3DS GPU in there (even cheaper) + a ARM Cortex A9 and you have probably a very cheap setup that can run all DS/3DS/VC games and all Android stuff too. 

It's not so much the chipset that makes things expensive, it's the LCD display, battery, and any type of custom component (like say a 3D screen) that will drive your costs up. If you stick to widely highly mass produced parts that are more than a tech cycle old you can get components for cheap. 

To be honest, I have to wonder if your basic idea might not be a better play than the "New 3DS followed by a Fusion platform circa 2016" roadmap. Nintendo is absorbing huge losses on the portable battlefield, waiting for 2016 to send in the cavalry probably only allows more damage to be done. 

A tablet that could play hundreds of DS, 3DS, NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, TG16 games on top of Android games and have enough grunt power to draw Wii games in 1280x720 resolution with fancier lighting effects ... I dunno. Maybe waiting for 2016 is too long. Nintendo could release a pretty kick ass handheld for cheap next year if they really wanted to. 

So what... 3DS getting new model like DS got DSi after 3.5 years... Expect sales to explode.