Best Buy CEO: The Reports Of Microsoft?s Death Are Grossly Exaggerated? By Me.

All day, the Internet has been erupting with news that the age of notebook and netbooks is over, and the age of tablets -- specifically, the iPad, of course -- has begun. One of the main catalysts of this eruption was Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn who supposedly told the Wall Street Journal that the iPad is cannibalizing laptop sales, especially netbook sales. Or did he?

Here's the blurb from the WSJ story this morning:
Mr. Dunn also said internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs, especially netbooks, by as much as 50%.
Now, that's obviously not a direct quote, but it is a very clear statement directly attributed to him. And it's a huge statement as Best Buy is the nation's leading consumer electronics giant. It's basically saying that not only is the iPad winning, it is ushering in a new era of computing. In other words, Microsoft and all the PC incumbents are screwed.

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