Proving again that last week’s statistics are old

Atom N550 netbooks on the way

August 18th we wrote that there were 50 million netbooks shipped. What do you get for $300 in a netbook ?

Today Intel reported it has shipped 70 million of the small processors inside the popular small computers. That should give Apple’s iPad a target to hit.

Apple hopes to ship 10 million iPads this year but aren’t worrying about netbooks. Apple worries about profit and the iPad is reported to have a gross margin above 60%.

Along with the impressive numbers, Intel said new faster dual core netbooks based on the new Atom N550 are shipping from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba. Running at about the same 1.5 Ghz speed, the dual core processors will make these popular and diminutive more popular than ever.

“Users will be able to run applications faster and play back 720p video in netbooks that are as thin and light as existing models. Netbooks with the new chip will offer similar battery life as its single-core predecessors, the company said.” PC World

We weren’t that far off after all. Our sales numbers were for Asus shipped netbooks only. Intel includes all manufacturers in their 70 million units shipped.