Touchscreens in less than 5% of Notebooks

Touchscreens in less than 5% of Notebooks

AU Optronics president LJ Chen says that touchscreen penetration in notebooks will be less than five percent globally this year. There are two problematic areas: how to integrate the touchscren functions with a notebook's upright display, and getting the software and hardware to integrate properly; Chen says the latter could take up to two more years of development time.

Full Story (DigiTimes.com)

 

Yeah, I pretty much dont see a big need for touchscreens in notebook form factor. Its an initial novelty and there are few cases where it makes sense especially with the current state of the software. On my tx2500z I rarely ever use the touchscreen. The active digitizer does most of the work.

 

I assume they are not including touch media buttons?

 

I give props to Apple for popularizing and expanding the use of the touchpad with nifty shortcuts and waggles. I don't think a fully touchpad laptop-screen makes sense though, especially if you work on a desk. Apart from software/implementation concerns, just functionally, you'd have lean in so close and hold your hand up so much in order to use the dang thing, that just would not be comfortable.

 

Touchscreen laptops make a lot of sense towards educators and shhould be directed towards them. This is because being able to write on and manipulate digital files while presenting it is a very good way to teach. For Calculus, my teacher writes on pdf notes while we fill in what he is writing on apiece of paper from the same pdf file. It works really well.

 

I can't see the usefulness of touchscreens in notebooks for anything other than the 'cool' factor; save for specific instances they are largely a novelty/gimmick. I had a tablet PC for some time and I never used the touch functionality during regular tasks. I can move my mouse an inch and access something on the other side of the screen faster than I can move my hand over there to touch it.

 

Capacitive buttons are not part of the display. If they included that, I would bet the statistic would be at least 20%.