There’s a growing number of analysts and pundits who believe that netbooks will increasingly become irrelevant to most customers as tablets This latest Retrevo poll seems to support that opinion.
The Retrevo poll’s sample size was over 1,000 individuals of different genders, ages, incomes and location who considered buying a netbook last year. The question asked was: “Did you hold off on buyinga netbook after the iPad was announced in January?”
The results are quite good for iPad. 40% waited to buy a netbook until after Apple announced the iPad, while 30% didn’t wait at all. The remaining 30%? They all abandoned their netbook plans and went with iPad instead.
These results make a lot of sense: for most people, the benefit of a netbook was price, portability and battery life, not Windows and multi-tasking. Guys like me might love our netbooks as production machines (my production cycle simply can’t do without being able to glance between application windows) but as a media-absorption slate, the iPad is going to continue to steal sales away from companies like Asus and Dell… at least until they come out with tablets of their own.
