Much of Munster's prediction hinges on Apple's well-known dislike of netbooks. In October 2008, CEO as "a piece of junk" and said Apple simply would not compete in the $500 PC market. "Our DNA will not let us ship that," he said at the time.

Last month, Apple's chief operating officer Tim Cook, who in the absence of Jobs is running the company, also . "When I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience, and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly," he said during an earnings call with analysts and reporters.

Munster is not concerned about the relatively long time that Apple will be without an entry in the netbook-priced market. Historically, he said, Apple takes a wait-and-see approach, scopes out the competition, then designs something different enough to separate it from the pack.

"A netbook would not differentiate Apple's product from other netbooks entering the market, and as we have seen with the iPod and the iPhone, Apple prefers to enter a market once [it] can offer a significantly differentiated and often premium version of the product," Munster said.

Although Gottheil agrees with Munster on some points, he disagrees on others. Back in March, Gottheil said Apple would likely use what he called an to compete with in the netbook market. Like Munster, he believed then that Apple would do without a physical keyboard and rely on multi-touch.