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 It's
been a good year for touch screens. The launch
of the first iPhone model a year ago boosted
interest in the technology tremendously, and the
updated model made available last Friday likely
will stoke enthusiasm further. Now touch-screen
manufacturers are going flat out, and more
devices will soon be controlled by the tip of
your finger.
"After the iPhone came out, a lot of
mobile-phone companies said 'Oh, I can make that
kind of touch-screen mobile phone, too,"' said
Jennifer Colegrove, analyst at iSuppli Corp.
In the US, Sprint Nextel just introduced a
touch-screen phone, the Samsung Instinct, that's
very reminiscent of the iPhone. Verizon Wireless
this year introduced its first two phones that
use touch screens as their main interface.
Research In Motion Ltd. is believed to be making
a touch-screen version of the BlackBerry. Sony
Ericsson is bringing out its first touch-screen
model in a few months.
Jon Mulder, product marketing manager for Sony
Ericsson's US arm, said touch screens have
become a "hygiene factor" — a must-have for
phones that want to compete in the high end of
the US market.
Colegrove projects that 341 million touch
screens will be shipped worldwide this year, up
from 218m in 2007 and 81m in 2006.
In the first half of 2007, before Apple's iPhone
launched, a big maker of touch sensors for
portable electronics would make perhaps a
million units per month, Colegrove said.
"Then in the second half of 2007, suddenly they
received huge orders, so they ramped up their
production to may be three or four million units
per month."
Besides iPhone, demand for touch screens is
driven by new phones in Asia that allow the user
to write Chinese or Japanese characters on the
screen, usually with the aid of a stylus. That's
much easier than entering those characters with
a keypad, Colegrove said.
Most touch sensors are made in Japan, Taiwan and
China by companies that are relatively unknown
in the US, like Nissha Printing, Wintek, and
Truly Semiconductors Ltd.
Balda AG of Germany supplied the touch sensor
for the first iPhone through a joint venture
with a Chinese firm.
In the US, major players in the touch field are
3M, though it mainly supplies larger screens for
ATMs and monitors rather than portable
electronics, and Synaptics, which supplies
components for Apple. Others, like Cypress
Semiconductor, make the chips that control the
sensors.
Synaptics has a growing business supplying touch
sensors for cell phones as well. It uses a
particular type of touch sensor known as
"projected capacitive." Before the iPhone came
along, Synaptics was struggling to convince
manufacturers that the technology was better
than the cheaper "resistive" screens.
"The technology was there to use years before
the iPhone," said Andrew Hsu of Synaptics.
Capacitive sensors are more durable, interfere
less with the screen's image and can sense the
touch of more than one finger at a time –
allowing for the iPhone's signature "multitouch"
ability. They cost about $20 (Dh73.46) for an
iPhone-size sensor, compared with about $5 for a
resistive screen.
Frustrated with the lack of interest, Synaptics
put together its own concept phone, the Onyx, in
2006 to demonstrate the capabilities of the
touch screen, including multitouch input. LG of
Korea then used Synaptics' touch sensor in its
Prada phone, which came out some months before
the iPhone. But it was Apple that broke the
barriers, Hsu said.
Colegrove expects projected capacitive sensors
to be among the fastest-growing technologies,
with more than 35m units shipped this year,
mainly for the iPhone and iPod Touch. That's up
from 10m units last year and only a handful in
2006. But the more traditional resistive type
will continue to make up most of the volume,
especially since they're better suited to stylus
input for the Asian market.
The touch-screen craze is spreading beyond
cellphones as well.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has said touch
sensors and speech recognition are a focus of
the company's development efforts.
Hewlett-Packard introduced a desktop PC with
touch screen last year and updated the line this
year.
Touch screens have become standard for GPS
devices, a fast-selling category.
Colegrove expects e-book readers to start coming
with touch screens too.
Touch screens are the ideal solution, Hsu said,
for maximising screen size while keeping gadgets
small.
They also make for easy-to-use devices, because
each application can present its own specific
controls, rather than relying on hardware
buttons shared with other applications.
"There's really no room left for buttons," Hsu
said.
The numbers
341m: touch screens are expected to be shipped
worldwide this year
35m: units were shipped for the iPhone and iPod
Touch this year
$20: is the price of an iphone-size sensor,
while a resistive screen costs $5
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