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The iPad is killing laptop sales

US retailer cites 50 per cent fall

iPad sales are slashing laptop sales by as much as 50 per cent, according to the boss of US retailer Best Buy.

Announcing sales of $11.3bn and profits of $254m for the second quarter Best Buy's chief executive Brian Dunn said internal research showed half of potential laptop buyers had chosen an iPad instead of a traditional laptop.

Dunn told the Wall Street Journal that internal estimates revealed iPad sales "had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50%".

See here for Dunn's "clarification" of these remarks.

The chain pushed profits up 61 per cent even though sales in established stores were flat. It reckons iPads, Kindles and motion-sensing game add-ons from Sony and Microsoft will be the big sellers in the run-up to Christmas.

The company will make iPads available in all its 1,093 shops. Dunn said: "People are willing to disproportionately spend for these devices because they are becoming so important to their lives."

It even blamed Apple for losing 50 basis points of market share. The statement said: "The decline was primarily driven by the impact of lost traffic associated with constrained inventory during the initial iPad launch which adversely impacted traditional mobile computing traffic." ®

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