Driven by soaring sales of Apple Inc.’s iPad and competing products, shipments of touch screens for such systems are set to rise by nearly 5,000 percent in 2010, according to iSuppli Corp. Global shipments of touch-screen systems for slate-type devices are expected to rise to 8.9 million units in 2010, up from just 176,000 in 2009, according to iSuppli. Shipments then will rise by a factor of seven to reach 63.9 million units in 2013.

iSuppli defines slates, the fastest growing segment of the tablet PC market, as tablet computers constructed in a single, unhinged form factor, similar to a child’s chalkboard slate, from which the term is derived. While early versions of these units, designed for medical and construction markets, included a physical keyboard, the market is now dominated by touch driven display centric units, with no physical keyboard.

“The rising popularity of slates is setting off a conflagration in touch screen technology, firing up not only the long-dormant tablet computer market but also all-in-one PCs, desktops and monitors,” said Rhoda Alexander, director of monitors and sustainability displays for iSuppli.

Fast growth in 2010
Touch screen demand has been growing in the PC market in recent years, increasing at a rate of more than 26 percent in 2008 and 52 percent in 2009, substantially faster growth rates than in the overall system market.

However, those growth rates are dwarfed by the expected 242 percent expansion of the personal computer touch screen market in 2010. Slate computers are the primary initial driver in the PC touch revolution, projected to grow from 3.8 percent of the PC touch market in 2009 to 56.2 percent in 2010, as the overall PC touch screen market triples in size.

Clearing the slate
In many ways the majority of the initial slate offerings have more in common with smart phones than with their convertible tablet predecessors. Primarily consumption devices, both slates and smart phones rely on mobile operating systems to provide instant-on and easy access to readily consumable content. Apple, as the early market leader, has clearly put substantial forethought into how to design its touch doors. That marriage of hardware design and seductive content is likely to keep Apple in the lead through the initial years of the slate market.

“Challenging Apple’s lead will take more than offering a less expensive alternative,” Alexander added. “Tomorrow’s market leader will need a mix of superior industrial design, compelling applications and an expanded touch interface-all delivered in an ever-more affordable package. However, competitors are gearing up for a fight, as demonstrated by Hewlett-Packard’s recent acquisition of Palm Inc., Google Inc.’s acquisition of BumpTop, and the acquisition by Amazon.com of TouchCo.”

The right touch
Pre-iPad, most of the slate PCs on the market relied on either active digitizers or resistive screens for touch functionality. Projected capacitive screens, which only appeared in this market in 2008, had a very small share. As the select technology of market leader Apple, projected capacitive has now shot to the lead, eclipsing the competition.

Nonetheless, digitizers and resistive markets continue to grow and both of these technologies as well as others still in the development stage take increasing shares of the market in the coming years, as vendors attempt to differentiate their products through function and cost.

Most of the current offerings are limited to two-finger touch, enabling users to touch, slide and easily expand or shrink images. While this represents a marked expansion of what users experience on your average ATM, it is a comparatively primitive version of the rapidly expanding touch universe.

Entry of the slate
“Slates are providing the most dramatic entry for touch screen technology in the PC space, but all of the other markets-netbooks, notebooks, monitors and all-in-one computers-are embracing touch, albeit at a slower pace,” Alexander said. “And although early favorites in the touch technologies are emerging, the field remains wide open. Today’s market leaders in the personal computing space-projected capacitive in slates as well as optical imaging in monitors and all-in-ones-are recent entrants to the touch environment and are still vulnerable to established alternatives and technologies just now emerging onto the market. The revolution has officially begun, and mice may soon be headed the way of dinosaur.”

Learn more about the touch screen landscape with Alexander’s upcoming report, entitled: Touch Screen Interfaces in Portable and Desktop Computing Systems.

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