Get the shovels out – analysts predict iPad will bury netbooks

Like we didn’t know this wouldn’t happen eh.

Morgan Stanley is calling it the reshaping of the PC market and in the process gives Apple a great big pat on the back by raising its target price to $332.00. Leading the charge at Morgan Stanley is Katy Huberty who raised her iPad sales estimates to 10 million units in 2010 (up from 6 million). At the same time she believes the company’s stock price could go as high as $440 by May 2011.

What’s turned her head? The blistering sales of the iPad and the diminishing growth of the netbooks’. Among her findings:

• The iPad is on track to become the fastest ramping mobile Internet device out of the gate and one of the most popular in history (see Exhibit 2).
• Early iPad usage patterns validate the tablet as a computing device. It’s already overtaken the Web browsing share of devices like the iPod touch.
• It’s at least partially responsible for a sharp drop in the growth of netbook sales, which decelerated to -13% year-over-year in the month of April, from +45% in the first quarter of 2010. Huberty thinks the netbook phenomenon may have peaked; she expects tablet sales to overtake netbooks by 2012.

Source: Fortune