Report: Apple iPad killing netbook sales

A recent report by Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) Research painted a picture in which the runaway popularity of the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad precipitated in the crash of the netbook market. As evidence, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty pointed to the historical data of netbook sales, and how it plummeted over the second half of last year, continuing to fall rapidly through the beginning of 2010, and dipped to new lows in April.

In comparison, the Apple iPad was announced in January, and launched in April. A separate survey in March which concluded that 44 percent of U.S. customers were planning to purchase an iPad--was also offered by Hurberty as further evidence of the correlation between iPad and netbook sales.

Personally, I think that it could just be the case of sheer coincidence; or perhaps the netbooks are simply proving to be a passing fad. Ultimately, it's really far too early to tell what kind of effect the iPad might have on the rest of the computing market--what with just one month of availability, and only in the U.S.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Fortune
- check out this article at Ars Technica 

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