Best Buy CEO: iPad Destroying Notebook Market - Wait, No It's Not

Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an article in which Best Buy's CEO (Brian Dunn) claimed Apple's iPad is destroying the netbook market - by "as much as 50%." The news, which was hardly surprising, did gain media attention online - and MacRumors, for one, reported on the story. Here's what the WSJ article stated:

Best Buy said smartphone sales continued to rise compared with a year ago, as did portable computer totals, buoyed by the iPad. However, television sales fell despite the rollout of new 3D models, with both average prices and total volumes notching "low-double digit" declines compared with last year. Mr. Dunn also said internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50%. "It's a very different environment now," said Stephen Baker, the chief electronics analyst for market researcher NPD Group Inc. "The real cool stuff now will be the tablets, e-readers and probably the higher-end digital cameras.

For some time now, we've heard and reported on reduced netbook sales at the hands of the Apple iPad. Steve even gave a nod of the head to netbooks, while announcing the iPad on stage at Apple's special event, earlier this year. The iPad was released in April, and unsurprisingly, it quickly began to kill the netbook market. However, following the release of the WSJ's article, Best Buy promptly started denying the comments in a move which proved to be more humorous than anything else. CNBC later reported that Best Buy reps were vehemently opposing the WSJ's understanding of Dunn's comments:

"What Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said was that we had no firm numbers, but that we speculated there was some replacement of netbooks by iPads going on," said spokeswoman Paula Baldwin. "We did not provide specifics because we do not presently have the hard numbers on which to base those specifics."

Sounds to me like somebody's backtracking. And, that's not all. Best Buy went on to issue a statement, ensuring their customers that Dunn's comments were "grossly exaggerated."

"The reports of the demise of these devices are grossly exaggerated," Dunn said. "While they were fueled in part by a comment in the Wall Street Journal that was attributed to me, they are not an accurate depiction of what we're currently seeing. In fact, we see some shifts in consumption patterns, with tablet sales being an incremental opportunity. And as we said during our recent earnings call, we believe computers will remain a very popular gift this holiday because of the very distinct and desirable benefits they offer consumers. That's why we intend to carry a broad selection of computing products and accessories to address the demand we anticipate this season."

So, essentially, Best Buy is stating that while the netbook market hasn't been affected as greatly as Dunn originally stated, it has still been affected. And, that's going to continue to be the case right through the holiday season. We've already heard the iPad is going to be the number one Christmas gift this year, which will obviously only serve to push the device's sales higher and higher into the stratosphere. And, with an expected second-gen iPad release date hovering somewhere around Q1 of 2011, Apple is going to want to ship as many first generation devices as possible before the new iPads arrive on Apple Store shelves. Regardless, the moral to this comic Best Buy tale is that iPads are selling well. But, we already knew that, didn't we? Let us know your thoughts regarding the iPad's success in the comments below.

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