Ars Technica reports on how the sales of small netbooks (like the Asus EeePC) are larger than the iPhone.

It appears as if netbooks are now “more popular” than the iPhone, according to data from Gartner and Display Search. This is not hugely surprising news because netbooks are cheap and handy, while iPhones remain a niche (albeit popular) item. According to the data, 5.6 million netbooks were shipped during the third quarter of 2008, which reflects a nice public interest in the item (compared to 4.7 million iPhones in the same quarter), but we’re not exactly talking overwhelming sales numbers. Rather, it’s a nice, steady market.

Not sure why they are comparing two very different products, but they are!

Key thing to remember is that a year ago, we didn’t have netbooks! The Asus EeePC had been announced, but wasn’t generally available and no other laptop manufacturer was going down that road.

The iPhone was only available on EDGE and lacked applications, now we have 3G and 10,000 applications to choose from.

Makes you wonder what is going to happen over the next twelve months.