With statistics from market researcher IDC showing that the sales growth of netbooks slowed noticeably during the first quarter – the year-on-year shipments to retailers dropped from a whopping 872 percent in 2009 to 33.6 percent this time round -, PC manufacturers have already begun contemplating which device in the portable computer market will next be fancied by the consumers.

Noting that PC makers tried to allure customers towards the netbooks – the low-priced ‘mini-notebooks’ costing in the range of between $200 and $500 – by making them appear like a different kind of device, IDC analyst Richard Shim said that people actually think of netbooks “as just another type of PC.”

Furthermore, the Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ evident contempt for the netbooks – saying at the iPad’s unveiling that the netbooks are “just cheap laptops – has further been worrying the already-apprehensive manufacturers of the devices.

Though HP, Acer, Dell and other PC makers have refrained from commenting about whether their inventories of unsold netbooks have increased, a March 30 DigiTimes’ report revealed that the demand for netbook components plunging for sure.

As per DigiTimes, manufacturers of the liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels for netbooks are slashing production due to declining orders.

Saying that netbooks are “losing their novelty,” Michael Abary, Senior VP of Sony's Information Products Technology unit, added: “We realize sales are not going to continue to grow at an astronomical rate.”