Is the iPad destroying Notebook Sales Growth?

A recent report at Fortune shows that U.S notebook sales growth is down -4%. Providing a graph from a Morgan Stanley study, it is clear that the sale of notebooks has been trending downward over the past few months.

Here is the graph-

It is being suggested that the decrease in sales growth is caused in part by the iPad. From the site:

• “NPD data showing that after six months of decelerating growth, U.S. retail notebook unit growth fell 4% year over year in August, marking the first time those numbers had actually gone negative.

• Similar data for the first week of September showing that units fell 4% year over year again.

• BestBuy CEO Brian Dunn's widely repeated remarks in the Wall Street Journal that "internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50 percent."

Huberty concludes: "We expect tablets to continue to pressure PCs as more vendors launch products (e.g., Dell Streak and Samsung Tab) and Apple expands its iPad distribution."

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that the iPad is taking up half of the notebook sales. The iPad is sexy and easy to use, but it still isn't ready to be a notebook replacement. There are times when having a USB port is pretty darn handy.

I am just not convinced that notebook buyers and iPad buyers are the same people. From the people I have spoken with who have purchased an iPad, it was more of an attempt to have a device that worked as a sort of netbook and e-reader all in one. I could better understand if this information were dealing with netbooks. Netbooks are a great idea in theory, but unfortunately, in practice, most of them are fairly worthless. They are good to use as a travel computer, but don't really have the functionality or ease of use that someone would want for a device they have just spent hundreds of dollars on.

So what do you think? Do you think that the iPad is responsible for the lack of sales growth in the notebook market?

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.