NPD: Don't Blame iPad for Slowing PC Sales

So those claims that Apple’s iPad is cannibalizing PC sales? Crazy talk, says NPD, which argues the device hasn’t materially affected consumer PC sales much at all.

According to the research outfit’s survey of iPad owners, just 14 percent purchased the device instead of a notebook or netbook during the first six months of its availability, a percentage that has since fallen to about 12 percent. And neither is great enough to have had much effect on PC sales. In fact, today cannibalization of netbooks is actually down 50 percent among recent iPad buyers, when compared to early adopters.

So if there’s a slowdown in consumer PC sales, who’s the real culprit?

Microsoft.

“The conventional wisdom that says tablet sales are eating into low-priced notebooks is most assuredly incorrect,” says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. “The explosion of computer sales when Windows 7 launched, as well as the huge increase in netbook sales at that time, are much more to blame for weak consumer PC sales growth than the iPad.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Tablet Cannibalization on the Rise in 2011
• Forecast: 19 Million Notebooks Lost to Tablet Cannibalization (Meaning iPad) in 2011
• IPad: Tonight We Feast on Laptop Flesh!
• Apple: The iPad Isn’t Cannibalizing the Mac, But We Sure Hope It’s Cannibalizing the PC
• IPad No Cannibal, Says Analyst
• Apple’s iPad: Angel or Cannibal?