According to IDC beancounters, the netbook fad could be coming to an end. Although sales are still growing, researchers claim growth is slowing down by a huge margin.

In Q1 2009, the netbook market grew by around 872 percent, but in Q1 2010 growth slowed down to just 33.6 percent. There could be quite a few reasons for the slowdown, mainly lack of innovation, as most netbooks still look, feel and perform like the ancient models that showed up in the summer of 2008.

Netbooks are also starting to face competition from cheap tablets, which are basically just another fad, fueled by Apple, which opted not to hop onto the netbook bandwagon.