Is Apple Stealing Windows Sales? Yes, but it’s no big Deal

Apple continues its unstoppable charge, selling every iPad it could make and a whole bunch of Macs in the most recent quarter, and the company is now claiming that it’s taking a bite out of Microsoft.

During the earnings call, acting CEO Tim Cook said:

“it’s clear that some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a new Mac, but what really excites us is more customers chose to buy an iPad than a Windows PC.”

He didn’t back this up with any claims. I can only presume he’s getting feedback from the numerous Apple stores, which do tremendous business and account for half of Apple’s sales.

His claims are somewhat backed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who had this to say about tablets (not any one product in particular) on the company’s earnings call:

“I believe this category is additive to computing. I don’t think it’s going to replace any one category. I think it may replace some discretionary sales at any point in time. And I think that’s one of the reasons that netbooks down year-on-year is this tablet’s strength to some extent.”

He also said netbooks are “probably” also down because of the very good value if you can get in low-end notebooks today compared to a netbook.

Tablets make sense as alternatives to netbooks, a product that was never going to last very long in the market due to it limitations. The tablet, now that it’s been done right, represents a true game change that netbooks could not be.

Sure, tablets come with Windows 7, so a lost tablet sale is one less Windows license out there. But as Steve Ballmer noted at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses and he’s really not worried about Apple’s minor victories.