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The claims that the iPad is eating into netbook sales have been debunked. Paul Thurrott wrote a piece on it on his site (winsupersite.com). Like with a lot of tech reporting, Apple gets a lot of hype, and their achievements are often exaggerated.
The iPad has sold quite well, but in comparison to computer sales, and specificaly netbook and small laptop sales, nothing special has happened here, especially when you take into account the hype surrounding the thing. Apple gets huge amounts of attention for selling 1million iPads, yet when Microsoft (who the tech press generally hate) sold 100 million copies of Windows 7 in its first few months, the tech press largely ignored it.
The real test of the iPad (and tablets in general) is not whether the Apple fanboys buy them (obviously the majority of the sales so far), but whether or not developers can come up with uses for it other than running iPod apps on a bigger screen. Of course if that happens, there will be devices not made by Apple that achieve the same and don't come with the Apple restrictions and ridiculous price tag.
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