Netbooks Lose Status as Tablets Like the iPad Rise

By STEVE LOHR
NYT

Remember the Last Big Thing in computing? You’ll be forgiven for having forgotten it was the netbook — a small notebook computer with a slender price tag, about $300.

Today, tablets are all the rage, including the iPad from Apple and a host of new entries starting to come from rivals like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion and Samsung. But less than two years ago, in 2009, netbooks were seen as the earth-shaking force in the industry, potentially changing the economics of the business and undermining the technology leaders, Intel and Microsoft.

Things didn’t work out that way. Netbook sales were meteoric in 2009, jumping eightfold in the United States, to 7.5 million devices, and tripling worldwide to 34 million. Yet the torrid growth stalled last year.

The extent of the changed fortunes for the product became truly evident recently, when year-end sales tallies were calculated. In the holiday season, for example, retail sales of netbook computers in America fell 38 percent from a year earlier, according to the market research firm NPD.

(More here.)