DisplaySearch Reviews Touch and Interactive Markets
August 13, 2012, Emerging Display Technologies Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Jennifer Colegrove from DisplaySearch reviewed the touch and interactive technologies markets. The markets and supply chains are growing in revenue as well as the number of vendors involved.
Touch screen module revenue was $4.3billion in ’09, growing to $7.1B in ’10. This is expected to exceed $17billion this year, and growing to almost $32B by 2018. This market growth is attracting new suppliers within the entire supply-chain. They are tracking over 200 suppliers across all the categories in supply-chain.
DisplaySearch breaks the touch market into 12 technology categories: resistive, surface capacitive, projected capacitive, sensor on cover, infrared, acoustic wave, optical imaging, in cell, on cell, digitizer, hybrid, and others. The fastest growing areas are projected capacitance, the superset of multi-touch interfaces.
For most of the industry, the supply chain includes various types of glass, chemicals, finishing, ITO, and controllers. Most of the vendors are in Asia, where the majority of the production is located. One consideration in this seemingly chaotic market is that manufacturing capacity is about equal to the demand. The forecast for the industry is that market demand will grow about 27 percent this year. Therefore, everyone has to drop their prices or get bigger quickly.
Some of the trends in the industry include a move to sensor on cover to eliminate a separate sensor glass. Sensors are moving either to the cover, onto the displays, above the displays, or in the displays. The in and on cell technologies are moving quickly into the AMOLED markets. The big issues are yield, cost, and the capability to customize displays for special functions.
On LCD panels, eliminating the sensor glass raises the issue of ITO damage to the color filters during the application processes. Changing to a single layer of ITO helps minimize the damage, but causes the design to be more complex. In cell touch technologies were developed in ’04, and started production soon after. This production dropped to zero in ’10, but was restarted in the next year, revived by Apple’s current iPhone.
Sensor on cover technologies will dominate the market. Projected capacitance peaked in ’11, and will decline fairly rapidly as the more highly integrated touch displays take over. The big applications driving the technologies are phones and tablets, followed by an emerging market in PCs, especially after Windows 8 is released later this year. Everyone is trying to move thinner lighter devices, so eliminating one layer of glass provides an easy path to the target.
