I was looking at £11.5-12k just to clarify; I wasn't expecting £50/60k!
Price was based on the potential size of the market for nettops. Low cost PCs that will come in a huge variaty of form factors (small boxes, all in ones, built-into-keyboards). Netbooks took the market by storm. Nettops are likely to do the same, except with more possibilities than a Netbook.
They are only starting to get serious now as the higher spec Atom330 dual core processors are being used and the better graphics chipsets with 3d graphics for games and full 1080p HD video playback. They will make the perfect media player for under the TV..
Add to that the more serious nettops that are aimed squarely at Web, email and office apps, then they provide a cheaper way for companies to deploy PCs at < $300 prices.
Intel estimates double-digit growth for nettop sales from 2008-2011 with 60million total sales. This compares to their estimates for 47million netbooks over the same period.
It's a valuable domain if it can monetised, or to a retailer/manufacturer. Get good traffic wanting to buy and you'll make over £10k a month; I did that for a while in the Xbox360 market. £11.5k-12k is a piddling amount for something that looks like it will be a massive seller (*)
(*) As always, everything has an element of risk.
