Apple (NASDAQ: APPLE) has so far resisted moving into netbook market. But with economy shedding more than half a million jobs each month, the company would have to rethink its growth strategy.

Shares of iPhone maker came under pressure on Friday after JP Morgan Securities cut its second quarter and fiscal 2009 earnings and revenue estimate citing a deepening economic downturn.

"Notwithstanding the current macro pains, we believe the company's content-driven product portfolio is capable of a multi-year revenue outperformance relative to its peers,” analyst Mark Moskowitz wrote in a note to clients. He lowered his second-quarter earnings estimate for Apple by 1 cent to $1.01 a share, and revenue estimate to $7.62 billion from $7.72 billion. Moskowitz also cut his fiscal 2009 earnings estimate for Apple to $4.73 a share from $4.82, and revenue estimate to $32.98 billion from $33.97 billion. Additionally, the analyst also reduced his outlook for Mac unit shipments in the second quarter to 2.19 million from a previous forecast of 2.39 million, and iPhone unit shipments estimate to 3.4 million from 3.8 million. “The next few quarters stand to get bumpy,” Moskowitz wrote.

A couple of days back, putting an end to months of speculation, the Cupertino, California based company introduced updates for all three of its desktop computer models, announcing new versions of the iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini.

In a conference call last year, CEO Steve Jobs had said that the netbook market still remains in its nascent stage and that the company would like to wait before entering the market segment. "I think that when people want a product of the class that we make, over and over again people have done the price comparisons and we're actually quite competitive. So we choose to be in some segments of the market and we choose not to be in certain segments of the market." Jobs said. "We're not tremendously worried. As we look at the netbook category, that's a nascent category. As best as we can tell, there's not a lot of them being sold," he added. Jobs stressed on the fact that in a sense, iPhone is a kind of netbook only. "You know, one of our entrants into that category if you will is the iPhone, for browsing the Internet, and doing email and all the other things that a netbook lets you do. And being connected via the cellular network wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket.

"But we'll wait and see how that nascent category evolves, and we have got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve," Jobs said in a statement. “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk,” he concluded.