I came across an interesting comparison pitting the sale of netbooks against that of iPhones. The raw numbers come from Gartner and DisplaySearch, which pegged the number of iPhones that have shipped at 4.7 million against 5.6 million units of netbook units sold.  One reason behind such a comparison is the thinking, by some in the industry, that perhaps the iPhone can replace the role of a portable computer.

In a way, this is no surprise, given that big brand names such as HP [1] and Lenovo [2] have joined Asus [3] in this niche market. Still, the really interesting question has to do with how the netbook managed to garner a bigger sales volume, despite coming out later than the first iPhone, and in spite of the iPhone's cult popularity. So do you think apple will come out with a netbook [4] to compete in the lucrative netbook segment?

To read more about this story:
- check out this article [5] from jkOnTheRun
- check out this article [6] from InformationWeek Blog
- figures from Gartner [7] and DisplaySearch [8]

Related Articles:
HP gets serious about netbooks [9]
Lenovo joins netbook fray with Ideapad S10 [10]
Asus unveils netbook that can handle games [11]
Analyst: Apple will launch netbook competitor in response to slowdown [12]