The notebook PC market has hit the wall — except for Apple

The iPad has hit the notebook PC market hard. A market that was growing 20% to 40% year-over-year per quarter just a couple of years ago is now basically flat.

Yet Apple — the company that is leading the tablet revolution — is also seeing much stronger notebook sales than the rest of the market. While the overall notebook market was around 0% year-over-year growth in Q1, Apple’s notebook shipments grew 53% year-over-year. (I added Apple’s data for the last 5 quarters to this chart, which Jefferies published today in initiating coverage of HP stock.)

So while Apple may have missed out on the netbook boom of 2009, it’s getting a good laugh now. Not only is the iPad making life miserable for the PC industry, but Apple’s notebook business — led by the MacBook Air and Pro — is still growing impressively.

We’ll see next week how things shaped up last quarter, with a full quarter of iPad 2 sales in the books, but potentially reduced Mac sales ahead of the OS X Lion launch (and expected MacBook Air update) this month.

Related: Jon Rubinstein’s new job at HP: Make it more like Apple