By Ed Silverstein TMCnet Contributor
The new iPad may be hurting the popularity of netbooks, according to a new survey from Retrevo Pulse, which said that consumers – who are deciding whether to buy an iPad or a netbook – are overwhelmingly leaning toward the iPad, with 78 percent going for the new tablet computer from Apple (News – Alert).
Apple sold 1 millioniPads in a month since its release earlier this year, and several competing computer companies are planning to release their own tablet computers by December.
Of those consumers trying to decide whether to buy a netbook or laptop, 65 percent chose the laptop and 35 percent chose a netbook over a laptop, according to the Retrevo Pulse (News – Alert) survey. The results are similar for those consumers considering a laptop or netbook over the coming year, with 35 percent leaning toward a netbook over a laptop and 65 percent leaning toward a laptop over a netbook.
With netbooks selling close in price to the cheaper laptops, packaging and portability could become their strongest selling point, Retrevo said. Retrevo predicted that record growth for netbook sales in the United States will likely not continue.
“As consumers find the iPad irresistible and inexpensive laptops more practical we predict netbook sales will get squeezed from two sides and will not be able to maintain past growth rates. That said, netbooks should continue to get cheaper and faster and will continue to be an attractive alternative to laptops or other mobile Internet devices,” Retrevo said.
The survey data came from a study of non-Retrevo users conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 people distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
Ed Silverstein is a contributing editor for TMCnet’s InfoTech Spotlight. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Alice Straight
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