It looks like the heat is on in the battle of taking the biggest slice of the market in the still fairly new netbook segment, and Acer now claims that they want 50 percent of the market by next year. This might sound a bit too optimistic with world+dog launching netbooks, but Acer has always been pretty strong in the entry-level market.

We're sure Asus, Dell, HP, MSI and everyone else will have something to say about it, though, but with the Aspire One already more popular than most Eee PC models in the U.S., Acer might be on the right track.

Some of it will come down to cost, as consumers are only going to be willing to pay so much for what in reality is an underpowered notebook; and no matter how good it'll be as a second or third notebook in many households. We have a feeling that the netbook market will slow down fairly quickly. Despite this, Acer is expecting to ship some 12-15 million units next year, which is no small figure.

As long as Acer sticks with its current formula, it might be possible, as unlike Asus who's trying to push it's Eee brand into more premium and expensive product lines, Acer has kept things simple by starting with a product that had mass market appeal, as the price, features and design all came together to make the Acer One a very attractive netbook.

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