Close on the heels of the somewhat lukewarm early reviews of Research In Motion’s August 12-released new BlackBerry Torch 9800, Amazon.com has recently listed the cost of the handset at $99.99 – which is almost half of the device’s original $199 price tag with a two-year contract through AT&T.

The price-reduction move by Amazon comes after some concerns that the $199 cost of the Torch was too high, particularly when compared to devices like the $200-priced Motorola Droid 2 Android-based handset that has a bigger screen and more powerful processor than RIM’s Torch.

That the Torch has failed to attract buyers, initially at least, is evident from the fact that Goldman Sachs has termed its launch as “underwhelming”; while statistics put forth by RBC Capital Markets and Stifel Nicolaus reveal that the sales of the handset during the first weekend were nearly 150,000 – a figure which is pathetically lower to the iPhone 4’s opening-weekend sales of almost 1.7 million units.

However, in spite of the rather modest first-weekend sales numbers of the Torch, several analysts are of the opinion that it still is too early to call the device a failure. Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, said: “To say after one week that the Torch is a failure is a real stretch.”

Some other analysts too believe that Torch will be most interesting to RIM’s typical business user base, which, incidentally, comprises users that do not typically make quick buying decisions!