Microsoft Admits Tablets Are Cannibalizing Netbooks

Microsoft has publicly admitted that tablets are cannibalizing netbooks, finally agreeing with what analysts, pundits and the general public have been saying for the past twelve months. SeattlePI sat down with Microsoft's general manager for Windows product management, Gavriella Schuster, who confirmed that netbooks are "definitely getting cannibalized."

"These are really a second device," Schuster suggested, referring to netbooks, "but they are getting cannibalized." Of course, Microsoft's own approach to the tablet market echoes its OS approach to the netbook market several years back: trying to get Windows on as many as possible. That worked with netbooks, the mini-notebook form factor of which fitted the OS' keyboard and mouse paradigm, but Windows 7 – despite Microsoft's work on increasing touch-friendliness – is yet to prove its worth for slates.