As expected, Apple's iPad helped erode the market for netbooks, which were also squeezed from above by falling prices of notebook PCs, during the second quarter, according to the quarterly report on the laptop market by research firm DisplaySearch.

Shipments of mini-note/tablet PCs in the three months ended June 30, 2010 increased 29 percent compared to the 2009 second quarter, though they dipped 4 percent from the previous quarter. However, without the 3.3 million iPads shipped in the quarter, shipments of mini-note/tablet PCs would have been down 13 percent from the year-earlier quarter and 14 percent from the 2010 first quarter, according to DisplaySearch's Quarterly Advanced Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report, which also tracks portable PCs with 5-inch screens and larger.

The acquisition of Palm by Hewlett-Packard has legitimized HP as a mobile-computing force.  In the absence of a Windows Mobile update, HP has taken matters into its own hands (see my previous post: Microsoft Hears the HP-Smartphone Door Slam ), but enough with the limb jokes...or is it lame-jokes?

A new study out from DisplaySearch reports 20 percent growth worldwide of netbooks this year--with 33 million shipping--while laptop growth languishes.

While the US and North America market are not leading the charge, as much of the growth will occur in Latin America and Europe/Middle East and Africa, the study illustrates that the mini-computers have a solid niche.

Microsoft may be turning up the heat on the search-engine front with the launch of Bing, but Google scored points of its own today, as Acer announced that it will offer a netbook that runs on Google's Android operating system.

Are we seeing the start of a new OS faceoff? The forthcoming netbook, a version of the Windows XP-based Aspire One, is expected in the third quarter, according to Jim Wong, Acer's president of IT products. Wong, who spoke at the Computex trade show in Taipei, praised Android's "incredibly fast wireless connection to the Internet."  Like the XP-based Aspire One, the new computer will use Intel's Atom processor.