Intel seems bent on shipping as many as 20 million Atom CPUs this year alone. It's unclear how many of those projected 20 million are single core and how many are new dual-core N330 parts, but in 2008 the dual-core will probably have a marginal market share at best.

According to Digitimes, Intel is currently expanding its Atom production capacity and more vendors are joining the Atom bandwagon as we speak. Asustek, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, LG, MSI and several smaller players have already embraced the Atom in their netbook designs and Sony and FSC are reportedly joining the fray in Q4.

Asustek, Lenovo, LG and Benq are also planning to launch MID devices based on the Atom in Q4, and the new dual-core Atom for desktops, or should we say nettops, should start trickling down to retail any day now.

The Atom, although coupled with a somewhat obsolescent chipset and faced with serious shortages and subsequent delays, is obviously proving to be a very appealing product for many consumers. Things will get really interesting once Intel lets vendors use dual-cores in their netbooks and AMD is probably not going to sit idly by and let Intel conquer this emerging market niche without a fight. VIA is already showing its teeth with its Nano CPU, which seems to offer even better performance than the single core Atom.

More here.