Over the next five years, touch screens will be as
pervasive in smartphones as Wi-Fi chipsets are today, reaching 97 percent of
all smartphones by 2016.
Touchscreens can claim as much credit for the booming
success of smartphones as can 3G data speeds.
In the time prior to the launch of the original iPhone,
smartphones with touch screens have gone from 7 percent of the total smartphone
volume in 2006 to 75 percent in 2010, and were a key driver to the market
growing more than 325 percent over that period, according to ABI Research.
The screen is the point of fulfillment for all that a
mobile device promises to deliver to its user, so there is little surprise in
the impact it can have on its success. However, it was the evolution of screen
and touch technologies that triggered the market’s rapid growth.
The more economical resistive touch technology has been
almost universally replaced in smartphones with the more elegant projected
capacitive technology that was first introduced in mobile phones through the
iPhone.
Screen and touch technologies continue to evolve and are
starting to reshape the markets for other classes of mobile devices.
Low-cost capacitive touch controllers that use just a
single layer of sensors instead of two, and save as much as 30 percent on the
cost, are opening the market for lower-end feature phones. And eReaders, which
are the most fragmented device category in both display and touch technology,
now have options that not only enable finger touch, but are at a cost that
could standardize the segment’s displays,” said Kevin Burden, vice president,
mobile devices, ABI Research.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
