back to article iPad not stopping PC sales, says analyst

The iPad is not pulling sales away from PCs, US-based market watcher NPD has claimed. Having spoken to an unspecified - but presumably statistically significant - number of North Americans who have owned an iPad for six months or more, NPD found that only 14 per cent of them had bought the tablet in place of a netbook, …

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  1. Alien Doctor 1.1
    WTF?

    "Cannibalisation rate declining"

    Unless, of course, you are Slovakian.

  2. lglethal Silver badge
    Go

    Im surprised by this...

    Im surprised by this as I would have suspected that tablets would be a replacement for netbooks and low range notebooks.

    I would also think that there would be very few people who would by a tablet looking to replace a PC or a high end laptop...

    Was the question asked "Did buying the tablet/ipad cause you not to buy a PC, notebook or netbook?" Or were the individual categories asked about? As this would make far more sense.

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    to 3G or not to 3G?

    Give nthe miserly Data pacages available from the US Carriers is it any wonder that 3G fondleslabs are not a popular over there.

    My US colleagues are amazed at some of the packages available in Europe. If you are luck to get good reception on the '3' network then their plans really take some beating.

    As for the iPad not replacing PC's... Well many people I know have both but they are using their PC's a lot less. There will come a time (iPad 3 or 4 timeframe and 20?? for some of the mythical android ones) where the tablet/slate/??? will be able to replace the majority of Laptops.

    Yes there are going to be exceptions. I do a lot of code dev on my Laptop so I'm probably not going to be able to replace my T500 with a tablet yet.

    As for you gamers (the minority of PC users) the graphics speed of the iPad 2(which will get better) and combined with more and more online contents then there will come a time then 'A gaming PC' will become a thing of the past.

    The functionality & usability of Tablets will only increase over time. IMHO, I think that 2012 will be the PC/tablet tipping point. PC sales will tank.

    1. stucs201

      replacing laptop

      >There will come a time (iPad 3 or 4 timeframe and 20?? for some of the mythical android ones) where the tablet/slate/??? will be able to replace the majority of Laptops

      I'll agree with this part. I think for some a laptop is a compromise machine. Not as portable or convinient as a tablet, not such a powerhouse as a high end desktop.

      I wonder if we'll see a (slight) shift back to desktops (for when needed), but coupled with a tablet (for when its enough).

      Personally I've never bought a laptop, but might get a tablet eventually (but I want HDMI *input* on them first, so I can also use it as a second monitor without needing software)

    2. stucs201

      replacing games PCs

      Here though I disagree.

      A games PC isn't just about the graphics speed. Its about a huge monitor, decent input devices (mouse, keyboard, joystick and (maybe) a gamepad), surround sound. Those things aren't going to appear on a tablet, because then it wouldn't be a tablet.

  4. juice

    The thing with the iPad is...

    it's great for consuming, but not for creating. To do anything proactive (including relatively low-effort things like uploading photos to Facebook), you need a PC. And the same is liable to be true for the foreseeable future: it may be possible to throw more processing power into abstracting and simplifying "creation" processes, but the tablet form-factor and UI isn't ever going to be as efficient or quick as using a PC with keyboard/mouse for tasks such as data entry, image processing and video editing.

    1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
      Pint

      Maybe now

      I think that's a very fair comment for the present generations of tech users, however I can imagine a similar argument posted way back when GUI's first started appearing on desktops, why would you want a mouse and windows, surely having one thing at a time in a text box on a text display makes you more efficient as you aren't distracted by shiny stuff.

      Not sure if things will change for future generations. My kids are under 10 and are so comfortable jumping from using a tablet device, to a keyboard and mouse on a desktop then to a laptop trackpad, it's frightening how old I feel as they tut and laugh at me, a 25 year IT veteran, trying to use a tablet the same as I use a desktop keyboard and mouse! They have learned already that each device requires a different way of working, me being a sad old git of 40 years old simply needs time to adapt, they don't.

      People adapt very quickly to changing tech. 30 years ago if you said we'd have 50" TVs in our homes linked to a world-wide network of data that can shifted to pocket devices in a split-second anywhere on the planet, then up onto a home computer no bigger than a slim brief case within another split-second, you'd have been patted on the head and told it was real life not Star Trek!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    No great surprise

    You can't get any real work done on one anyway.

  6. Mark .

    I have a tablet...

    It's called a Nokia smartphone. If people are seen using conventional PCs less when they're out, by far the biggest change in the last ten years for mobile computing has come in the form of handheld devices (i.e., tablets) that can also do phone calls. Nokia and now Android are the leaders here, not Apple (unless you redefine the market to only look at the Ipad, which is a circular argument).

    Computers that run full OSs (like Windows, Linux) aren't going to go away though. As for netbooks, I suspect their biggest competition is ultra portable laptops (which now offer much more power, at only a slightly bigger size, and only slightly more expensive). Remember, when netbooks appeared, ultra portable laptops didn't really exist, unless you spent a lot of money.

  7. Paul Bruneau

    Another poor use of the term "Cannibalisation"

    Cannibalisation is when a company's new product takes sales away from one of its existing products.

    OK, yes, the dictionary does say "usually from the same company", so I suppose one could mean "it is cannibalising sales from other parts of the computing devices industry" but I would argue that is called "making sales". For isn't any sale of anything having some effect on other parts of its industry?

    Anyway, save the C term for when a company is sucking its own blood, I beg you. You know, like when one of the Android tablet makers releases a slightly better one before they have even shipped their first one!

  8. Arctic fox
    Happy

    Hardly suprising......

    ......since you can neither activate nor update your iPad without access to a Mac or a PC. When the day comes that we get the Mac OS and Win 8 on tablets - then we will be able to talk about "replacement".

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