The competition between Intel and OLPC has extended to Europe, recent reports have shown. Portugal expects to receive 500,000 new Classmate PCs for its students, which pretty much looks like a serious kick for the OLPC project that only received orders of 600,000 XO laptops worldwide.

The Magellan Initiative, which is a program under Portugal’s education technology plan, aims at delivering Intel-powered Classmate PCs to half a million students in the upcoming school year.

“We enthusiastically support Portugal’s commitment to a comprehensive technological plan for education,” said Intel Chairman Craig Barrett. “The government’s priority to make technology accessible to Portugal’s schools and children is a model for governments and corporations working together to prepare future generations for long-term opportunities.”

Intel will deliver Portuguese students compact, easy to use, water and shock resistant systems, with locally relevant educational software, including in Portuguese.

In March this year, Intel announced its plans to make Classmate PC available throughout Europe and the United States, despite its previous announcements that it would only focus on people in developing countries.

Intel said about the Classmate PC that “it is a revolutionary new device targeted at providing one computing solution per student in emerging markets,” but now has high expectations of it on a broader scale.

One year ago, Intel decided to join the OLPC team in a surprising move, considering Intel’s criticism concerning the XO “gadget” and the accusations of Negroponte that Intel was trying to undercut its efforts.

OLPC is a non-profit organization established by Nicholas Negroponte in 2005, whose main purpose was to offer every child in the world the possibility to own a computer. However, they’ve been struggling ever since to reach the price goal of $100 for the XO laptop.

However, the “love story” between the two didn’t last that long, and at the beginning of this year, Intel said it wanted out and redrew their funding. The reason for the unexpected move were that Intel was asked to stop funding the Classmate program (which aims at producing inexpensive laptops for children in developing countries), as it would compete with the OLPC program.

“OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively. At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request,” an Intel spokesman said at the time.

OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte answered Intel’s anti-competition claims by saying the important thing is to bring laptops to as many children as possible, adding that a future collaboration with Intel might still be possible.

It’s been a controversial collaboration from the beginning, as both Intel and OLPC came from highly criticizing each other’s actions to joining forces for a common good, in an initiative that didn’t last very long.

All in all, as OLPC still struggles with demand and prices, Classmate PC seems to be one step ahead, and has even bigger plans for the future, with a new generation of “chip laptops,” offering better performance at a price ranging from $250 to $300.