• Fortune, Thursday, May 6, 2010 1:57 PM

Apple's iPad might not have been designed to replace netbooks, but you wouldn't know it by looking at recent sales numbers for the low-cost, low-powered computing devices. Indeed, sales growth of netbooks fell off a proverbial cliff in January, and then shrank again in April, according to new report from Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty. The steep decline is definitely collateral damage from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad, according to Huberty. Sales of netbooks peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate.

Yet, "Her timing seems a little off," notes Fortune. "The NPD data she cites is from January, but Steve Jobs didn't unveil the iPad until the end of January." Still, in Huberty's own defense, she offers a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey conducted in March that found that 44% of U.S. consumers who were planning to buy an iPad said that they were buying it instead of a netbook or notebook computer.

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