The chief executive officer of Best Buy, one of the largest chains that sells electronics, said that the company saw massive cannibalization of netbook sales after the Apple iPad hit the shelves of Best Buy earlier this week. Meanwhile, analysts believe that the success of the iPad is not cast in stone and the "death" of netbooks is greatly overwhelmed.

Brian Dunn, chief executive officer of Best Buy, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs, especially netbooks, by as much as 50%. Best Buy also indicated a plan to expand iPad distribution to all of its 1093 U.S. stores September 26.

However, iPads cannibalization is closer to 15%, according to an analyst from NPD, a leading analytics company.

 “We see a rush of early adopters and the curious buying an incremental device that they wouldn’t have bought otherwise because it’s cool, not because [they said] 'Oh, I was going to buy a notebook, and now I’m going to buy an iPad'," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD, reports Laptopmag web-site.

People actually do not replace netbooks or notebooks with slates like Apple iPad. At the end of the day, the iPad lacks productivity software from Microsoft Corp., which is needed by the absolute majority of consumers, who actually use personal computers for business.

"Just because sales are going down the same time iPad sales are out there doesn’t mean that there is this huge replacement right now of iPads by computers. Still, given the fact that the iPad has been out less than a year, the mid teens is nothing to sneeze at, and it will be interesting to see how this cannibalization number grows as more tablets hit the market this holiday and beyond," added Mr. Baker.

Tags: Best Buy, Apple, iPad