Emerging Display Technologies
August 19, 2010 San Jose, CA—The Emerging Display Technologies Conference focused on other areas of displays, touch screens. Jennifer Colegrove, director of display technologies at DisplaySearch unleashed a tsunami of data and trends on the touch screen market. The technologies associated with touch screens are rapidly becoming part of a everyday life.
The drivers for touch screens include labor cost reductions through customer self-service, ease-of-use especially for the new user interfaces, improved flexibility for customization and upgrades, and easier cleaning and maintenance. There are over a dozen touch screen technologies that enable these functions, each with distinct characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. These technologies include resistant, capacitive, infrared, acoustic wave, optical imaging, digitizer, in-cell, on-cell, combination or hybrid and others.
To support these technologies, more than 190 touch screen suppliers are manufacturing products. Over 90 of these companies manufacture of resistive type touch screens, and over 50 make projected capacitive screens. Most of the manufacturers only use one technology and many are also pursuing multi-touch capabilities. The choices in technologies are becoming more important, since not all technologies are growing.
There are over 20 application categories addressed by various technologies and manufactures. Over 600 million units shipped in 2009, and are projected to exceed 1 billion by 2012. The market is expected to grow to $13 billion and 1.5 billion units by 2013. Touch penetration was 15.8% in 2008, which is expected to reach 57% of the mobile market in 2016. The migration from simple phones to smart phones is driving the adoption rates.
Some of the opportunities for growth in touch panels include multi-touch, slate/tablet PCs, e-books, and pocket projectors. At the same time, there are many challenges for the industry. Multi-touch requires significant changes in software while both pen and finger touch applications are growing. The increase in touch applications is good for the semiconductor manufacturers who make the controller ICs, but now some display makers are moving into the market. The technologies are creating issues with materials, with replacement of ITO is the primary concern.
Projected capacitive technologies and also expand to larger sizes some applications include aviation, retail store windows, etc. There are many opportunities to increase system integration and save costs in components and materials. Projected capacitance technologies were the second-largest market in ‘09 and are expected to become number one in 2010. It’s a very crowded market that needs to reduce prices to become more competitive.
Optical imaging is starting to see consolidation at the same time the total market is growing. Novel illumination methods and sophisticated sensor algorithms are enabling more applications especially in larger size screens.
One new area in touch screens is tactile feedback or haptics. Physically indicating a touch improves accuracy and the user experience. Some applications use a force feedback while others use a mechanical motor to make vibration or movement. A number of products are using this haptic feedback technology.
Touch screen module revenues will increase 2009 to 13 billion dollars by ’16, a rate 10 times faster than the display industry. Many competing touch technologies with new solutions are still being commercialized. There is no perfect touch screen technology so the choice of technology is highly dependent on application or size requirements. The touch screen industry has many opportunities for growth in the next several years, but the most important issue will be to reduce costs to make the various technologies more competitive.
