Parsing the touch-screen market

After the launch of Apple’s first iPhone in 2007, touch screens became table stakes for handset manufacturers. In 2008, nearly every vendor came out with their own touch-screen copycat. MultiMedia Intelligence now predicts that by 2011, touch-screen phone shipments will reach 178 million. In September, ABI Research put revenue for this global touch-screen market at $5 billion in 2009, but this month research director Kevin Burden pointed out that not all touch screens are created equal.

Burden separates touch screens into two categories: resistive and capacitive. Resistive touch screens, the majority of those on the market today, are activated by physical force, while capacitive screens like the iPhone are activated by a finger’s electrical charge. Although capacitive screens have gotten the lion’s share of attention this year, resistive screens will remain the dominant global screen of choice going forward, he said.

“These are two very iconic phones, the G1 and iPhone,” Burden said. “Those are the phones people talk about, as well as the BlackBerry Storm. They are different, they are iconic, but it doesn’t necessarily mean this is the way all phones will go. Nokia just came out with the N97, their high-end model. There is no model with more features packed in it – it is their showcase phone. It’s also their second touch-screen phone. It’s also got a resistive screen. For all the features and whiz-bang stuff they threw into the N97, it still has a resistive screen.”

Nokia’s high-end smartphones like the N series have fared better outside the United States, where resistive screens are the norm. Especially in the Asian markets, styluses are needed to capture the number of characters in foreign languages. And the Asia/Pacific market consumed more than 80% of the world’s touch-screen-based mobile phone production over the past year, according to Burden. He said that if a manufacturer’s goal is to build an iconic device that shows the advancement of touch-screen technology and new types of navigations, capacitive is a great model. But if the goal is to achieve significant volumes and spread to many parts of the world, including Asia, resistive screens will continue to be the leading technology.