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Strong Mac sales show no iPad cannibalization

Apple's iPad may be selling well, but it's not taking away from sales of the company's Macs, according to a new market research report released Tuesday.

Jim Dalrymple Special to CNET News
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop.
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With more than 3 million iPads already sold, there was a chance that consumers would drop the Mac and instead choose to purchase an iPad. However, according to one analyst, that hasn't happened.

Apple

Interpreting data from market research company NPD, Piper Jaffray Senior Analyst Gene Munster said he sees no signs of the iPad cannibalizing Mac sales. In fact, Mac sales were up 37 percent year over year for the first two months of the June quarter.

NPD data suggests Apple will sell between 3.1 million and 3.2 million Macs for the quarter, which matches Wall Street expectations of 3.1 million units for the quarter.

"Apple has successfully limited the iPad functionality to primarily content consumption, vs. content creation on a Mac," Munster wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. "And relative to the iPod, the physical size of an iPad provides a meaningfully different value proposition (portability vs. screen size)."

Munster also said that while cannibalization will exist in the long run, he expects it to be minimal.

The news for the iPod wasn't as positive. Sales of the iPod were down 13 percent for the first two months of the quarter, but Munster still expects between 9 million and 10 million units to be sold this quarter. Wall Street expectations for the quarter is 9.5 million units.