It turns out that netbooks maybe having an impact on notebook sales, going by what some analysts are saying. Back in August, we mentioned comments by Intel’s Chief Financial Officer about the concern of netbooks cannibalizing larger / mainstream notebooks. They felt it was growing the market and should be looked at in that light (and from that angle, they are correct, netbooks are the first exposure many have to laptops).
On Tech Trader Daily, there is an article that mentions analysts a slowdown in the notebook market due to netbook sales – that perhaps netbooks are eating away at the entry-level notebooks. Obviously Intel is not too affected – a sale of an Intel CPU is still a sale of an Intel CPU, even at a lower profit margin, but it still impacts their financials to an extent. Apple on the other hand (and they are mentioned), they are the only major producer that hasn’t publicly announced or hinted heavily at jumping into the netbook market (I would argue however that they are the most anticipated, judging by the number of people shoehorning OS X onto netbooks.