According to Gartner, which tracks worldwide shipments of laptops and analyzes trends, Acer is gaining ground on the worlds most popular laptop brand, HP. During the 2nd quarter of 2010, HP had about 17% of the market share, while Acer had 13%. That’s not very stunning until you compare the same two companies’ market share from the 2nd quarter of 2009, HP had 18% and Acer had 12%. (It should be noted, at this time last year, Acer was trailing Dell, 12.6% M.S. in worldwide sales.) To round out the top 5, after Dell is Lenovo, followed by ASUS, which bumped Toshiba out of the top 5 in worldwide sales.

When you look at the US sales statistics, you notice that US sales don’t necessarily mimic the worldwide trends. HP still sits atop the list with 25.7% of the market, followed by Dell, 23.7%, Acer, 11.3%, Apple 9.8%, and Toshiba rounding out the top 5 with 8.7%.

In EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) sales are vastly different. Acer takes the the number 1 spot away from HP, with 21.3% of the market. That’s up from 18.9% last year. HP is in 2nd place with 19.7%, down from 20.8%. But then there’s a dramatic drop off between 2nd and 3rd, Dell sits with only 9.2% of the market in the region, while ASUS, 8.5%, and Toshiba, 5.7% place 4th and 5th, respectively.

The design of the 532h is nearly identical to its predecessor, the Aspire One 751h. The main difference you will notice is the multi-colored, metallic-blue and black lid. The device itself is quite portable weighing about 2.4lbs and measuring only .99″ thick which makes it thinner than its competition, the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE and the MSI Wind U135 and the all-plastic chassis feels like the right fit for the price tag.

The 532h utilizes a chiclet style keyboard but it doesn’t feel like it was implemented good enough. The keyboard is spacious and has two full shift keys, the key spacing feels to close and the keys feel too flat which seems to make touch typing somewhat difficult. The touchpad is of the kind that “flows” along with the rest of the palm rest. By this I mean that the only way you can tell where the palm rest stops and the touchpad begins is by the feel of the grid of rubber dots that makes up the touchpad. The pad feels nice on your fingers but it can feel too grippy sometimes.

The 10.1″ screen has a native resolution of 1024×600 pixels which is typical for its class. However, the screen is surrounded by a very thick black bezel which, in my opinion, looks pretty bad and the horizontal viewing angels aren’t all that great. The 532h comes with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive that also comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition for a price tag of $349.99. There is a $299.99 version that comes with 160GB of storage as well. The standard 6-cell battery has a solid 6.5 hour battery life which is pretty good for a netbook.

The specs on this machine aren’t going to be the main reason it sells a lot of units. While good, the specs are not that good. What really is going to get people is the price. The price difference is between $30 and $80 depending on which model you get and that is going to be a deciding factor for many people. If you are looking for a great on-the-go netbook that is truly a netbook then the Aspire One 532h is something you should definitely consider.