IPad No Cannibal, Says Analyst

Mac sales continue apace, with no evidence of cannibalization by the iPad. According to NPD, Mac sales were up 39 percent in April and 35 percent in May–or an average of 37 percent year over year for the first two months of the June quarter. That’s significantly higher than the 19 percent the Street is looking for and, as Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests, strong evidence that the iPad is not undermining sales of new Macs.

But why?

Simple: Apple (AAPL) didn’t intend the iPad as a laptop replacement, and the market doesn’t view it that way. Says Munster: “Apple has successfully limited the iPad functionality to primarily content consumption, vs. content creation on a Mac. And relative to the iPod, the physical size of an iPad provides a meaningfully different value proposition (portability vs. screen size).”

In other words, the iPad is proving to be additive for Apple.

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter rootyb]