Analysts say the iPad has determined the shrinking of the notebook market

20th September, 2010 by adina
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Katy Huberty, analyst at Morgan Stanley, has produced evidence that the entire notebook market has been affected by the iPad. Her analysis is based on NPD data from August showing that retail notebook sales have lowered year-over-year and this happens for the first time in the history. When the iPad first shipped in April, notebook sales immediately started falling. The decline continued until the first week of September.

Huberty also used the observation made by Brian Dunn, Best Buy chief, saying that the iPad had cut his notebook sales in half, although it had ultimately determined an increase at the retailer for the portable computing category.

It is not certain whether the iPad has been the cause of this trend on the market. It is possible that the tougher economic climate has hurt spending and thus has impacted on the full-size notebook category which is more expensive. Intel has been conservative with its notebook performance and had only little gain over the last two years. It gave consumers little reason to replacing the netbooks they had bought in 2008 and 2009.

Regardless the effect, Katy Huberty expects tablets to have a stronger impact over time. In her opinion, the wider iPad distribution corroborated with the launches of other tablets like the Dell Streak or the Samsung Galaxy Tab may lead to a veritable cannibalization between tablets. This could have as effect consumers to skip on purchases of notebooks.


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