CIOZone.com - Professional Network for CIOs and IT Professionals

By Rob Garretson

Though an estimated 58 million netbooks will be sold this year, the pace of market growth is slowing, as the iPad and other media tablets start to steal some netbook thunder, according to the latest projections from ABI Research.

In 2010, netbook shipments are expected to reach 58 million, up from 36.3 million sold in 2009, according to ABI, which noted that its February 2009 forecast of 35 million proved conservative. The firm has also added a new category for the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and other media tablets, for which it forecasts sales of about 8 million in 2010. Apple sold 1 million iPads in its first 30 days last month.

"We expect the netbook market to fragment according to different regional value propositions," said ABI principal analyst Jeff Orr. "Apple's claimed shipments of 1 million iPads in the first month are impressive starting from zero, but even our total media tablet forecast falls far short of what anyone would call mass market adoption."

Still, ABI sees brisk tablet sales contributing to the declining growth rate for netbooks, which it expects will slow to a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent for 2010.

Separate research on Apple sales data indicates that the success of the iPad is coming more at the expense of iPod music players than Apple's Macbook notebooks, as was feared by some on Wall Street. Apple's U.S. Mac sales for April were up 39 percent, compared with April 2009, according to research firm NPD Group, significantly outpacing the 19 percent to 23 percent growth Wall Street analysts have forecast for the second quarter. Yet iPod sales were down 17 percent for the month, year-over-year, NPD says, while Wall Street is forecasting a 9 percent decline for the quarter.

In a note to investors, Piper Jaffrey Apple analyst Gene Munster concluded that the iPad does not appear to be cannibalizing Macs as some analysts feared, and that the apparent impact on iPods is relatively minor.

"April NPD data gives us the first sign of the degree to which the iPad cannibalizes iPod or Mac sales," wrote Munster. "From the early NPD data, it appears that the iPad has a minimal cannibalization impact on Mac sales, and could be slightly cannibalizing iPod sales."

He praises Apple for having "successfully limited the iPad functionality to primarily content consumption," while maintaining the Mac's supremacy for content creation. He adds that the relative size differences between the iPad and the iPod line provide a distinct value proposition that keeps both products viable.

"We believe in the long run Mac cannibalization will exist," he added, "but will be minimal."

Comments (3)

	1. 05-18-2010 17:36
	I would lend more credence to the argument that iPad growth is coming at the expense of iPod sales, not netbook sales.   When you consider that the iPad is twice as expensive as a typical netbook,it's not exactly an easy swap to make. Registered

Mel Duvall

	2. 05-20-2010 13:22
	My prediction is that tablet sales will peak before significantly impacting netbook or laptop sales. The problem is the keyboard. Nobody who does significant intensive spreadsheet, word processing, database or email work will prefer to a virtual keyboard. Registered

Mark Henricks

	3. 06-01-2010 21:48
	While I agree that iPads will cannibalize iPods and take a bite out of e-readers to a greater extent than it will affect netbooks, both the iPad and netbooks could benefit from tactile user experience improvements. As noted, the iPad keyboard experience is lacking, and the mouse action on many netbooks I've used is sub-par. Registered

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.