Touch panels to grow 9 percent by 2009

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: The year 2007 has been a fruitful year for the touch panel industry. With the wider applications of small- and medium-sized touch panels in such consumer electronics products as mobile phones, palm gaming machines and multimedia players, the overall touch panel market is expected to have an annual growth of 9 percent by 2009.

This demonstrates that the technology and ergonomic focus of the interface have triumphed over the early inertia that always results from the market and consumer skepticism.

This victory in the market indicates that touch panels will extend to other application fields such as large-sized gaming machines, gambling machines, kiosks, medical instruments, ATMs, POS and GPS. If this trend continues as expected, the production value of the global touch panel market will grow from USD 2.8 billion in 2007 to USD 3.5 billion in 2010. It is also predicted that large- and medium-sized touch panels will take over as the driving force in the growth of this sector from 2010.  

Ergonomic touch panels to get popular

Though no one can clearly predict the trends resulting from human interaction with machines, it is apparent that in several years, ergonomic touch panels will be one of the most popular methods. As a result, we may imagine that in the future, ergonomic touch panels will be seen in all kinds of new locations such as schools, homes, banks, airports, and department stores.

Notably, since 2007, the applications of large- and medium-sized touch panels in the retail market have shown obvious growth. Reports predict that the market production is going to reach 9 million units this year. The tablet PC market has also shown roaring growth since 2007 due to the products’ improved efficiency and slimmer sizes. Market output may reach 3 million units this year.

In the past few years, the dangerous trend of pursuing “volume” over margin has persisted in the IT industry. Most companies focus on initial shipping volume and crazily invest in perceived “hot hits” without worrying about the problem of low profits. This situation has gradually emerged in the small- and medium-sized touch panel market. While portable devices such as mobile phones are getting more and more popular, they have a relatively lower technology barrier to entry, and new competitors and copycats are able to aggressively join the battle to share the pie.

However, as those companies have weaker control over upstream materials, patents, and/or new technology, they may therefore lead the market into a price war. As a result, the struggles common to low-profit OEMs would soon be upon them. In contrast, although market demand for large- and medium-sized touch panels seem to be smaller, the higher product differentiation, lack of significant competition and better profits may help to form and sustain a new business model.

Besides, the diversified technology of large- and medium-sized touch panels and higher barriers to entry should allow manufacturers to relatively easily survive in this globalized market after they lead in competitive technology and gain strategic partners.

By observing the current development of small- and medium-sized touch panel market, we may make reasonable guesses about the future of large- and medium-sized touch panels. In addition to the growing demand from consumers, innovative technology will indeed have a significant impact. The simple fact is that people want ergonomic interfaces to operate machines.

In the future, we may dream up a perfect way to do so in different application fields and environments, enabling users to easily, conveniently and safely fulfill their needs, but until then, touch screen technology is as close to perfection as modern technology can take us.