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Taiwanese sources are seeing a major increase in sales of notebook touchscreens of all sizes and types, and Digitimes is reporting that we can expect to see each major notebook/netbook vendor releasing 2 or 3 new touchscreen models by the end of October. On release they are not expecting large shipments, but those are expected to pick up in the second half of 2010 as the devices become more commonly accepted.

According to Digitimes…

Touchscreen panel maker Young Fast Optoelectronics said that it expects the shipment share of touchscreen models in the notebook (including netbook) market to increase from the previous forecast of less than 5% to 4-10% in 2009, judging from demand from its clients and PC vendors’ positive attitude towards the market.

Ten percent of the notebook/netbook market going touchscreen is very impressive, all the more so when the numbers are supposed to blow up in 2010. I would expect the increases to be tied mainly to the coming release of Windows 7 with it’s heavily hyped Multitouch capabilities. Of course, notebook/netbook vendors are also struggling more and more to make their products unusual or notable and touchscreens are still sexy and newish enough to provide some marketing bounce.

I would be curious to know how many of these touchscreen devices will just be “notebooks with touchscreens” and how many will be true TabletPCs…or as CTitanic calls them “Touch Compliant” as opposed to having full HID drivers. Personally, even without full TabletPC capabilities, I think a touchscreen makes sense as a secondary input device, especially on netbooks. Often it is just much easier to be able to touch icons or buttons rather then mess with a small touchpad…and I am looking forward to see more touchscreen models on the market.

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).