Is the iPad hurting netbook sales?

It's starting to look like it. DigiTimes, which covers IT news in and around Taiwan and China, notes that both Hewlett-Packard and Acer are getting deliveries on hardware that are smaller than expected. Component makers say that "vendors are clearing inventories, which were high partly due to competition from tablet PCs."

HP was originally expected to take 4 million netbook deliveries, and instead the company is getting 3.7 million. Acer was expecting to take 3.6 million units, but now is expected to take about 3 million.

There has been continued speculation about whether the iPad would be impacting the sale of netbooks, and it's beginning to look that way. Even Microsoft has admitted that the iPad is taking sales away from Windows-powered netbooks. I think both netbooks and the iPad can be considered "accessory" computers, and while there are, of course, differences in functionality between an iPad and a netbook, they seem to be attractive to similar segments of the market.

Add to that the fact that laptop prices are coming down, as are the weights of these portable computers. The new MacBook Air computers are proving to be very popular, and they give consumers something between an iPad and a full size laptop.

[via Business Insider]