During a recent conference call, Dirk Meyer, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), offered up his opinion of the effect the iPad was having on the portable computer market. “Clearly, in the last quarter or two, the tablet has represented a disruption in the notebook market.
If you ask five people in the industry, you’ll get five different answers as to what degree there’s been cannibalization by tablets of either netbooks or notebooks,” Meyer said. “I personally think the answer is both, and given the pretty high price points of the iPad, there’s probably some cannibalization even of mainstream notebooks.” Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn recently said the iPad was eating into sales of traditional laptop PCs by as much as 50%, but soon backtracked on his statement.
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