Touch technology is increasingly used

Touch screens originated in the 1970s. In the early days, they were mostly installed in industrial or commercial equipment such as industrial computers and POS terminals. The launch of the iPhone in 2007 became a milestone in the development of the touch screen industry. Apple designed a mobile phone that required at least 20 buttons to be operated with only three or four buttons, and the rest of the operation was completed by the touch screen. In addition to giving users a more direct and convenient operating experience, it also made the appearance of the phone more fashionable and thin, increasing the intimacy of direct human-computer interaction, which attracted enthusiastic pursuit from consumers and also opened the journey of touch screens to become the mainstream control interface.

At present, the application scope of touch screens has become more and more extensive, from the control/operating system of factory equipment for industrial use, electronic inquiry facilities for public information inquiry, commercial cash machines, to mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras and other consumer electronics. Of course, the most widely used among them is still mobile phones. According to the report of research organization ABIResearch, the shipment volume of mobile phones with touch screens will exceed 100 million in 2008, and it is expected that the shipment volume of mobile phones with touch interface will exceed 500 million in 2012.

And there are signs that the application scope of touch screens in consumer electronic products is expanding from small-sized fields such as mobile phone screens to notebook computers with larger screen sizes. At present, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Asus and other first-tier notebook computer brand manufacturers are planning to launch notebook computers or UMPCs with touch screens. Of course, there is still debate in the industry as to whether notebook computers equipped with touch screens can expand from low-priced notebook computers or UMPCs below 10 inches to the mainstream notebook computer market above 14 inches. Because for mainstream laptops or desktops, consumers are accustomed to using keyboards and mice for input, unlike small-sized laptops, which have limited keyboards and need touch screens to achieve more intuitive human-computer communication. In addition, the Windows system does not support multi-touch function yet. If PC manufacturers introduce multi-touch function alone, the effort and investment in software will be very considerable. Therefore, it is expected that before the new operating system Windows7 supporting multi-touch is launched in 2010, laptops equipped with touch screens will still be limited to less than 12.1 inches. But even so, the future development prospects of the touch screen market are also very attractive. According to the forecast of market research institutions, the output value of touch screens will reach 3.5 billion US dollars by 2010.