Touchscreen technology is sweeping the consumer electronics market as technology brands hope to come up with the next iPhone, but these new toys could be little more than plenty of hype especially in the PC market.
Major phone and PC makers such as Nokia, Research in Motion Hewlett-Packard and Asustek have launched touchscreen-enabled products, aiming to ride the trend of what they expect to be the next big thing.
Microsoft's impending launch of its next-generation Windows 7 operating system is expected to give the budding technology a further boost, bringing a software that supports such capabilities into millions of home and office PCs.
But most consumers may not find touchscreen PCs very different from their usual laptop or desktop PCs, and the technology is unlikely to spread beyond mobile phones.
"I don't think it's going to be the next big thing by any means, but just more and more brands are going into it," said IDC analyst Jay Chou.
"The software's still in an embryonic stage, and until that changes, hopefully with Windows 7, it's still going to be a while more before we see things taking off."
Touchscreens, once only commonly found in supermarket checkout counters and airports and banks, jumped to the forefront of consumer technology thanks to Apple's popular iPhone, inspiring a whole list of knock-offs in the process.
The old-fashioned keyboard and mouse could still be the best way to use a PC, with user interaction habits notoriously hard to change, especially if there is a dearth of software support.
"I think it sounds like a lot of hype," said Gartner analyst Tracy Tsai. "It seems impractical to me for a person to use touchscreens on a computer, and when you're using a device so big, it really adds little value to the over all experience."
Touchscreen PCs have been around for a while now, but high costs and limited functionality have kept them to niche devices. These type of PCs make up less than 1 percent of all computers sold worldwide. While most analysts expect this figure to climb, few see it growing as quickly as some computer brands expect.
"The biggest question to me is how much value does a touchscreen add to your computer? Probably not very much, and if that's the case, why would I want to pay more money for such a computer," said iSuppli analyst Peter Lin.
High cost associated with touchscreens could set back the technology a few more years until prices come down, with the cost of manufacturing a panel and its required chips jumping manifold on a PC when compared to a smaller smartphone.
Specialist manufacturer Wintek estimates it costs about $10 to make a 3 inch touchscreen frequently used in smartphones, but said costs can increase exponentially when the size increases.
Touchscreen chip designer Elan Microelectronics, which counts Dell and HTC among its clients, estimates that adding a touchscreen to a desktop computer would increase its price by more than 10 percent.
"We've got to wait for the cost to come down a little before the kind of growth we're seeing right now in mobile phones can spread to computers," Elan's Chairman IH Yeh told Reuters at during the PC trade show Computex.
"Right now, I think it's still an issue whether or not consumers are willing to fork out an extra 10 percent for a touchscreen on their computers."
PC brands' previous forays into touchscreens have fizzled. With products such as the Tablet PC not living up to its initial hype when they were launched more than a decade ago.
(http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4763026.cms)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment