It seems that sales of tablet devices, most notably Apple’s iPad, have eaten into sales that would otherwise have gone to netbooks, with surveys indicating that the tablet market grabbed a sizeable chunk of netbook sales.

Expect netbooks to still do well in business and academics...

According to Venturebeat, that figure could be far higher than might otherwise have been expected, with a recent survey carried out by the folks at Retrevo putting the cannibalisation at around 30%. That is to say, of those users surveyed who had been looking to pick up a netbook, 40% waited to see the iPad, then went on to buy a netbook anyway, 30% bought a netbook without seeing the iPad, while fully 30% eventually opted to pick up Apple’s tablet rather than a netbook. It’s a big figure, but perhaps not the most interesting to have come from Retrevo’s survey.

At least as interesting was news that the iPad isn’t the only device eating into netbook sales, the humble notebook has been doing more than its fair share too. This is something that many had suspected might be on the way; with conventional notebooks becoming more portable but still offering better screen sizes and increasingly solid battery life, it seems that netbooks have become less attractive by comparison.

Strangely enough, this is very much the sentiment that Michael Dell expressed towards the end of last year, but for which he was fairly roundly criticised. Dell suggested that netbook users would soon tire of their relative lack of power and be tempted back towards heavier-duty machines.

Indeed, seen in that light, the whole netbook explosion could well be seen as a kind of a perfect storm. It just so happened that the device’s were made available at a time when Windows Vista had effectively failed to take off, meaning that the world and its mother was using the relatively resource light Windows XP instead. Just us? Maybe.