News - Tablets responsible for 'cannibalising' notebook sales, reports suggest

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Research points to drop in demand for traditional laptops.

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Read more.

So does that mean there are slower sales for MBPs and Macbooks?

And any sign of prices coming down to match the drop and try and entice people back?

What? Tablets? Or cheap netbook grade ones?

Given that there is no good cheap tablet, I don't for a second believe this.

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

What? Tablets? Or cheap netbook grade ones?

Given that there is no good cheap tablet, I don't for a second believe this.

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Why? There's plenty of people who've bought an iPad instead of a new laptop, let's face it for the majority of home users a tablet format offers a better all round experience than a laptop (listening to music, watching videos and surfing the internet).

I like how my laptop can rest on the arm of the sofa, so I don't have to hold the thing the whole time, not something you can do with a tablette, however I guess I just don't get IT.

i meant laptop prices, hence enticing people back.

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Originally Posted by Lucio

Why? There's plenty of people who've bought an iPad instead of a new laptop, let's face it for the majority of home users a tablet format offers a better all round experience than a laptop (listening to music, watching videos and surfing the internet).

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Its not at all cheap.

I can't see someone that was going to buy a £450 laptop/netbook deciding that you know what, they'll get that thing instead. Espesually as its is so feature incomplete.

Perhaps people were buying laptops before when they didn't really need them. For people I know, that's not the case - if anything laptops were cannibalising desktop sales because they liked doing their computing (Office work) on a device with a small table footprint and ability to use it around the house.

For coffee table browsing an iPad is perfect, but as such it tends to make a better second device than something people use instead of a laptop/desktop, owing to lack of data entry ease.

So in short, I don't agree with the assumptions. I think iPads have created a new market for themselves, especially in the second device area, but that's not directly responsible for lack of laptop sales, instead we're probably seeing a decline in yr on yr simply because of high sales for the last two years on the back of windows 7, and now there's a longer replacement period.

these sales are replacing the sub £500 market in the main, people who don't care about computing but just want a convenient way to web-surf and watch video.

What I am trying to say is the report is misleading. It's not laptops, its netbooks.

There is no way an iPad is competing with an actual laptop.

Well, no, not for US lot, but for the other 96% of the population who don't know about all this and think "Hur, hur... shiny! touch screen! Oooooh!" they're fairly interchangeable.

Well, a net book isn't really capable of much more than web, and an iPad provides that, in a shiny form.